It was understandable, then, that thrown together as fellow outcasts, we banded together for support. And at least we had one period every day when we were left to our own devices and could relax together, away from the nuns’ relentless displeasure at our very existence.
There was a common room on the ground floor, a big shabby place with a large number of lumpy mismatched chairs and an old sofa; a flickering old black and white television stood in a corner. Every evening after tea a number of us would congregate there – mostly pregnant girls rather than new mums, because the latter were generally too exhausted – to swap stories about our other lives, the ones we’d been forced to leave, and to support each other through the inevitable admissions of distress.
A lot of the conversations were about our bumps. We would discuss how big we were and how big our unborn babies might be, and we would put our hands on each other’s stomachs to feel them moving. We also speculated about where we might be when our waters broke and, ignorant as most of us were about such matters, what the business of giving birth might be like.
‘Did you hear about Zena?’ Mary asked me one evening, a couple of weeks into my stay. Zena was one of the other pregnant girls who, unlike the rest of us, seemed more bored and fed up than distressed by her plight. There was a lot of muttering, too, about how little work she had to do and how the nuns didn’t treat her like they did us. She was a model, Mary had told us, and was visited regularly by her unborn child’s father. He was a wealthy married man who was supporting her through the business of dealing with their little ‘inconvenience’.
‘He brought round a huge bouquet of flowers this morning, by all accounts,’ she said. She looked disgusted. ‘And fruit. All right for some, eh? But paying her off is what it’s really all about, don’t you think?’
‘And did you see Sister Roc around him earlier?’ added Linda. ‘Fawning all over him she was, like he was someone so important. When the fact is he’s no better than any of us. Worse. Married, and with no intention of getting divorced either. Makes me sick.’
‘He gives them money,’ one of the other girls chipped in. ‘For the convent. That’s why Zena doesn’t have to do half what we do. That’s why she can spend her time sitting around worrying about her stretch marks. One rule for one and one rule for others. Such hypocrisy, when he’s just as—’
‘Hey,’ called one of the girls from the other side of the common room. ‘Hush up. Ready Steady Go! is about to start.’
We all trooped across the room to gather expectantly round the screen. Such programmes were one of the few remaining pleasures that connected us to the lives we’d had before – even if they did also highlight how different our lives had become.
‘Oh, The Beatles!’ Linda squealed, as ‘Twist and Shout’ came on. ‘I just love them; I just love them; I just love them!’ She leapt up again and immediately began dancing.
‘Oh, me too!’ agreed another girl, getting up and pushing a couple of the armchairs out of the way to make an impromptu dance floor. I got up and helped her, and before long we were all jigging about in front of the television, the reality of our lumbering, heavily pregnant states forgotten, as for a moment at least we could forget where and who we were. When the song ended and they launched into a second number, we were so excited that we all cheered in unison, which was probably what alerted the Reverend Mother.
With our backs to the door, it took a while for us to realise she was there. It was only thanks to the enthusiastic gyrations of one girl that, one by one, we turned to see the Reverend Mother standing in the open doorway, one hand on the doorknob, the other raised in rebuke, her index finger rigid.
‘Stop that at once!’ she barked, crossing the floor, her face pink. ‘What, in the name of all that’s holy, do you think you’re doing?!’
No one dared speak, much less move.
‘Angela!’ she snapped at me, causing me to jump. ‘Turn that television off immediately! And you, Mary, put those chairs back where they belong! And Ann – all those cushions. Immediately!’
She stood glowering as we scurried around reassembling the furniture. ‘Have you no shame?’ she said. ‘Have you all forgotten why you’re here?’ We stood, heads hung now, short of breath and perspiring, none of us daring to reply. ‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘And you’d do very well to. Because it’s this sort of wickedness that got you all here in the first place! And it’s only by the grace of God and the kindness of others that you are here, being cared for in your shame. How dare you behave in such a fashion in this place! You are here to atone, and you’d do well to remember that!’
I was standing closest to her, and could smell talc overlaid with that faint whiff of mustiness that seemed to cling tenaciously to all the nuns’ habits. She looked me in the eye, and I could see how tired and old she was. ‘Have you no shame?’ she said again. Then she turned and stalked out.
It was only when we heard the door opposite bang shut that any of us dared to breathe out.
‘Old witch,’ Linda said.
‘Hateful crone,’ muttered someone else.
No one laughed. Mary burst into tears.
Lying in bed that night, I wrestled with the paradox of my situation. It seemed my world had at the same time both expanded and contracted: expanded in that I was living through such a life-changing experience, and contracted in that it was happening in this closed, claustrophobic place, where I was being treated like a child – a wicked child.
Thank God for the other girls and our growing bonds of friendship. As, in the small hours of the night, when the chattering had ceased, I realised I’d never been so alone.
Chapter Five
‘Ah, Angela. There you are. I’ve been wanting to catch you. D’you think you could do me a really big favour?’
It was early October now and I’d gone into the nursery to collect the empty bottles after the mid-morning feed. Ann, now one of the new mothers, was still there, in the middle of changing her baby. She was at the far end, by the last cot, which was always reserved for the newest baby. I’d not spoken to her since she’d returned from the hospital, as we didn’t often mix with the new mothers, but she’d always been friendly and kind to me before.
‘Of course,’ I said, as I made my way round to her, picking up the water jugs and empties. ‘How can I help?’
‘I have to go to a funeral on Friday,’ she said, deftly doing up her baby daughter’s nappy. She looked impossibly tiny, dark pink and so delicate, yet Ann seemed to handle her more like putty than porcelain. She cooed at her and soothed her as she folded the heavy towelling.
‘I heard about that,’ I said, as I reached her. ‘I’m so sorry.’
She smiled wanly at me. I could see she’d been crying. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But the thing is that I’m going to be gone for most of the day, so I was wondering if you could look after Louise for me. Do her feeds – there’s only two to do – and change her, of course. Would that be okay?’
I looked down at the tiny brand-new human being on the changing mat, so small and yet so unfathomable and unpredictable. It seemed impossible that in a matter of weeks I would have one of my own.
Ann lifted Louise up and pressed the tiny cheek to her own. ‘She’s no trouble,’ she said, smiling at her daughter. ‘You’re an angel, aren’t you?’
I picked up the last of the empty bottles, and tried to imagine myself with a baby that small and helpless in my arms. It was a huge responsibility, but at least it would be practice. ‘Of course I will,’ I said. ‘That’ll be fine.’
I’d been in the convent for three weeks and I was heavily pregnant, my enormous stomach alien in proportion to the rest of me. I’d always been slender and light-footed; now I felt swollen and exhausted, my ankles protesting painfully. Getting sufficient sleep was becoming more difficult. The baby I carried would be born soon, and it too would be one of those tiny pink beings in the nursery, dwarfed between the bars of the enormous metal cots, cots that were designed for much bigger,
older babies; newborns at the convent never saw cribs.
I knew almost nothing about babies. I’d barely seen any or known any. Though Ray had two children – my niece and nephew – they’d been born in South Africa, so I’d never even met them, let alone spent time with them or cared for them. The closest member of our immediate family in England, my Auntie Ellen, my mother’s sister, had not been able to have children of her own, so I didn’t have any cousins. As she too had rashly embarked on a ‘mixed’ marriage (her husband was a Protestant), it was forbidden for her to adopt.
I hadn’t seen my Auntie Ellen since before I’d found out I was pregnant. My mother broke the news to her, and I didn’t need much imagination to guess at her reaction, as she’d so often expressed her bitterness about not being able to have children of her own. She naturally felt my pregnancy was unspeakably sinful and unfair.
Louise was to be entrusted to my care for only a few hours, but when Friday came around and Ann left for her funeral, I was petrified. ‘You’ll be fine,’ Mary reassured me. ‘It’s all instinctive.’ But it was scant reassurance, because when I told her I’d never held a baby before, she looked at me incredulously. ‘What – never?’
It seemed incredible to me too, once I gave it some thought, but it was true, and as I went into the nursery to give Louise the first of her two feeds, I felt wholly inadequate for the task.
I picked her up – she was crying, of course; they all either slept or cried – and gingerly eased my hand under her tiny skull. This seemed to calm her immediately, which helped my confidence a lot, but then she started to cry again. It wasn’t her mother picking her up, and I sensed she knew that. As I lowered us both onto the nursing chair beside the cot, I felt the weight of the world in the shape of this tiny little human. Where would she end up? What would her future be like when she left the convent? How could Ann, now she’d given birth to her, bear to part with her?
Tentatively I pushed the teat of the bottle into her tiny open mouth, and almost immediately the crying stopped and was replaced by urgent sucking. She seemed so strong, her little lips really tugging on the bottle. As she fed, her expression became dreamy and faraway, softening her angry features as if by magic.
I was all at sea again once the bottle was empty. Louise had fallen into what looked like a deep and dreamy slumber, but I would have to wake her up to change her nappy. She protested loudly as I got up and took her over to the changing mat, and even more as I tried gently to remove her clothes. How horrible it must be, I thought, to be a baby in this place. It was so cheerless and cold – all hard surfaces and draughts. I knew I was making things worse with my ineptitude. The nappies were so big. There was so much cloth, so many corners, so much stiff, scratchy towelling – and I had so little sense of what to do with it. All the while Louise was looking up at me, fractious and bewildered and uncomfortable, as the chill air of the cavernous nursery began to turn her little legs blue.
‘Here, let me help,’ said one of the other mothers, who’d joined me at the counter. I’d been taking so long over everything, she was the only other girl left in the nursery. ‘It’s almost too painful to watch you!’ she said, smiling warmly. Once again, I could only stand and marvel as she showed me the correct way to fold the nappy, how to lay it beneath the baby and how to deal with both the fabric and the scary nappy pins.
‘There,’ she said proudly, before returning to her own baby. ‘That’ll give you a head start when your own little one comes along.’
She looked about eighteen, and could have been even younger, but she seemed so efficient, so calm, so untroubled by her baby’s angry kicking. ‘How old is he?’ I asked her, as she redressed her little boy. ‘Close on six weeks now,’ she said. ‘He’s just gorgeous, isn’t he?’
I agreed that he was, as she picked him up again. She held him to her face, just as Ann had done. It was almost like she was trying to drink in the scent of him. ‘Not long now,’ she said, giving me a wry half-smile. ‘Less than two weeks.’ She kissed him again. ‘It’s all gone too fast – much too fast.’
The light caught her face and despite her cheerful demeanour I could see tears shining in her eyes. ‘How can you bear it?’ I asked, because I genuinely wanted to know. I just couldn’t see myself there, having to be her, having to be so brave.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m not even sure I can yet. But I’m going to have to bear it, aren’t I? What else is to be done?’
As she relinquished her baby to the jaws of his cot and hurried from the nursery to resume her chores, I wished I knew her story. Where had she come from? What was she going back to when she left? But then, I thought, I already knew her story, didn’t I? It was the same as mine – wretched. And she was right: there was nothing to be done about it.
What a horrible, unfeeling world we both lived in, I thought, as I picked Louise up to return her to her cot. She was wide awake now, and once again crying loudly, and I hated the thought of having to dump her onto the hard, unyielding mattress, knowing she’d have to cry herself to sleep. To make matters worse, just at the moment when I was about to lay her down, she was violently sick, vomiting up what looked like half the bottle’s worth of baby milk in one great rush of liquid that spewed all down her front.
Having ejected the milk, she immediately looked happier, but she was now soaking. The front of her nightie was drenched. I’d have to change it. I couldn’t leave her like that. She’d get hungry again, and there was nothing I could do about that, but she’d also get chilled to the bone lying in wet clothing. I carefully placed her in her cot and went to look in her locker; Ann had shown me where I could find a change of clothing.
I knew that I had to be quick, but I wasn’t quick enough. I’d just gathered up Louise and a dry nightie when I heard Sister Teresa’s voice rasping behind me.
‘Angela!’ she snapped. ‘There you are! Why are you still in here? Why aren’t you attending to your duties?’
I felt a rush of defiance flood my cheeks. She knew full well that I’d agreed to look after Ann’s baby, so where did she think I was?
‘I’m changing Louise,’ I explained. ‘She’s—’
‘Still?’ she interrupted, looking genuinely incredulous. ‘You’ve been in here for ages. What on earth have you been doing all this time? Is she fed?’
‘Yes, she’s fed.’
‘And have you changed her yet?’ She looked from me to the baby.
I nodded. ‘Yes, yes, I’ve changed her nappy, but—’
‘So why are you still here? Put her back in her cot, for pity’s sake!’ She glanced around her. ‘All this noise! You’re disturbing the other babies!’
Not as much, I thought crossly, as you are. I kept my own voice pointedly low. ‘It’s just that she’s been sick all down her front,’ I persisted. ‘I wanted to put her in a dry nightie, so that—’
‘For goodness’ sake!’ Sister Teresa barked, marching towards me now. ‘Fuss, fuss, fuss. Give her to me . . .’ She held her hands out and irritably flapped her bony fingers towards me. ‘Come on,’ she said, taking Louise from me. I thought for a moment that she was going to change Louise for me, but I was instantly disabused of such a fanciful notion. ‘Now put that nightie back where you found it and get back to the milk kitchen. There’s work to be done. For goodness’ sake,’ she rasped, heading back to Louise’s place in the line, ‘a little posset down her front isn’t going to kill her, Angela!’ Then, as I watched, she deposited the now howling baby on the mattress. ‘Go on,’ she said, turning, and making shooing motions in my direction. ‘Why are you still here? There’s work that needs to be done. Get back to your duties.’
As I made my way back to the milk kitchen, feeling I’d let Ann down badly, I couldn’t help but be incredulous. This was a nun. Someone I’d been taught was a person with a vocation to do God’s work on earth – wasn’t that the idea? If Sister Teresa was supposed to typify such a person, then the world had gone mad, I decided.
It was a world tha
t, for me, had seen major upheavals. My father’s death had brought about many changes in our family, not least of which was that my mother, always the disciplinarian, became doubly strict, feeling the need to take on the roles of both mother and father. My whereabouts and my companions had to be known to her at all times. Boyfriends were vetted – embarrassingly. Whenever they called for me, she would confront them on the doorstep, explaining that she was my voice for the present and I was most definitely unavailable. It wasn’t surprising that hardly any boys passed muster, as she reasoned that my father would never have approved of them.
Some relief from this maternal pressure came with the arrival of my stepfather, Sam, into our lives in the summer of 1961. My mother had been introduced to him by a family friend and they’d soon struck up a friendship.
When I first met my future stepfather, I’d immediately felt apprehensive. He was a 53-year-old bachelor who had lived with his mother until her death a couple of years earlier. What on earth did he know of family life? His values were frankly Victorian. It was clear that he took a lofty moral stance in all things, and had a pretty dim view of what he perceived as a laxity in the way I was disciplined. I was, as he and my mother kept repeating, his concern now too, at least until I reached the age of twenty-one.
It was a decidedly quick courtship. They were married in March of 1962, and we all moved into his bungalow in another part of Essex. My mother was given free rein to transform his home – now also ours – and enjoyed freedom from constant financial anxiety. There was more freedom for me too. Though providing something else for my mother to focus on besides me, the move to Sam’s bungalow created logistical problems, as it was miles away from where we’d lived before. But I didn’t mind. I was eighteen – almost an adult. My friends now being somewhat distant geographically, I could at last enjoy some respite from questions and curfews, as whenever we socialised together, it was much more practical for me to stay overnight with them. Just as my mother relished having a man in her life, I relished her being less present in mine.
The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers Page 5
