‘I mean it’s just so wrong,’ she said. ‘How could they do that and have any sort of conscience?’
‘Society was just different then,’ I tried to explain. ‘An unmarried mother was a pariah.’
‘But to whom, exactly? How could people call themselves Christians and then treat other human beings in such an unchristian way?’
That was difficult to answer, because I’d asked myself that same question many times. I said so. ‘But it wasn’t just Christians,’ I went on. ‘Many people in those days felt the same – the majority, I’d say. If you got pregnant and weren’t married, you really were shunned, not just by the Catholic Church but by “polite” society. You were the lowest of the low.’
‘Whereas the fathers – the men who made women pregnant in the first place – I bet they got away with it scot-free.’
‘Very often,’ I agreed. ‘Yes, of course they did. It wasn’t seen as their problem. And often, in reality, it wasn’t. It was the woman’s responsibility because it was the woman who had the baby.’
‘And not that much has changed,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘But it’s still so incredible that you could be sent away like that, and made to feel so shameful. And forced to have your baby away from everyone, all on your own, with no one to care for you. And then to have to hand the baby over. I mean, how could anyone have thought that was okay?’
‘I don’t think anyone really thought it was “okay”,’ I said. ‘I think people just thought there was no other solution.’
‘But not everyone, surely? Some girls must have kept their babies.’
‘I’m sure they did. If they had the support at home, I suppose they must have. Sometimes a girl’s parents would bring up the child with them, and pretend the mother was an older sister – that sort of thing. But for others—’
‘Like your mother . . .’ Her expression was pointed now.
‘Well, it wasn’t an option, no, not in a million years. Not financially; not socially. The Church, religion, faith . . . well, it’s complicated, isn’t it? Religion’s a powerful force in the world.’
‘I don’t think it’s that complicated,’ Katharine argued. ‘Not at all. Not when it’s your child you’re talking about, surely? I mean, how could your own mother have put you through that? It’s barbaric. I mean how can you say someone’s a bad person because they accidentally get pregnant? And then treat them so badly – take their own child away from them – and then claim the moral high ground? That seems much more immoral to me!’
I understood her reasoning. She lived in such a vastly changed world. ‘It was a different time,’ I said again. ‘It’s hard to accept now, I know, but that was just the way things were. People did accept it. I accepted it. We all did. I got myself into trouble and I had to take the consequences. Gran was only doing what she thought was the right thing.’
‘But still,’ she persisted. ‘Someone should have been looking after you! I mean, can you imagine?’ She picked up the photo of James as a baby, and the cot tag. ‘I mean, think about it,’ she said. ‘You were hardly any older than I am now, were you? And you had to go to that horrible place, all on your own, and live with a bunch of strangers, and then go and have your baby, all on your own again, only to have them take it away from you! I mean, think about it, Mummy. Can you imagine putting me through that? Can you?’
My daughter’s words did make me think. Could I ever imagine that? No, of course not. I’d have rather put myself through it – and more – than see my child suffer the way I had. But I also knew that forgiving my mother had been one of the most important things I’d ever done.
She had died of a heart attack in 1985, just two years after Sam had died. One of the things I’d reflected on after receiving James’s letter was that she hadn’t lived to know that I had been reunited with the child she had made me give up.
We’d never spoken of it again, not in detail, not in passing, not even obliquely. Though I understood this was the only way she could deal with what had happened, it still upset me, particularly in the early years, to have my own hurt unacknowledged. I didn’t expect her to apologise – as I’d said to Katharine, my mother had only done what she’d thought was right – but it would have been a comfort to know that she did at least acknowledge my distress.
If I’d learned anything in my life as a result of my upbringing and my religion, it was forgiveness. And when God had forgiven me – which, in giving me my precious daughter, I believed He had done – then it seemed only right that I should feel able to forgive my mother. I did it for myself as well: it wouldn’t have been healthy to spend the rest of my life feeling bitter. It would have been like a canker, eating away at my soul.
Instead I have been blessed in so many ways in my life. I had found Michael, I had my beautiful daughter, I wanted for nothing and I made a point of counting those blessings, often. Had God seen that, I wondered, and stepped in to repay my stoicism by allowing me to get to know my son at last? A bit of a fanciful notion, probably nonsense, but it seemed apposite, even so.
Despite the excitement, despite the joy, despite my son’s evident pleasure in having tracked me down, one big question – perhaps the big question – still remained: would James be able to forgive me?
Katharine wrote to me that evening, the sweetest, loveliest letter, in an attempt to order the thoughts she’d not yet been able to when we spoke. She told me how thrilled she was for me, and how much she understood my reticence about telling her before. And she wanted to let me know again just how thrilled she was for herself, because now she might finally have that older brother she’d been hankering after all her life.
‘Oh, but I’m so upset I’m going to be missing out on all of this!’ she said, as we clambered out of the car, ready to meet the school coach. It was 18 February and we had arrived at her school in Sevenoaks, ready for her and the other girls to make the trip to Gatwick Airport, from where they’d fly to Lyon for their ten-day stay.
She pulled the boot open and yanked out her holdall. ‘I don’t want to go now, I really don’t. I don’t even like her!’
The ‘her’ in question was Isabella. She was the French girl Katharine had been paired with and who’d come to stay with us the previous October. And I did sympathise. Though we’d tried hard to make her welcome, she didn’t seem to want to be here. She was rather sullen and a bit petulant. I felt for my daughter. They had little in common. I felt a pang of guilt that she not only had to miss out on the ‘big event’ with James, but she also had to go and stay at the home of a girl when she’d really rather not.
‘You’ll have a great time,’ I told her, reassuringly. ‘I know you will. It’s not like it’s just you on your own, after all. You’ll be doing loads of group activities, and Lyon is lovely, a fabulous city. Just think of her house as somewhere to sleep. After all, that’s all it is, really . . .’
‘But I want to see James! Oh, I’m so jealous. The biggest and most exciting thing to have happened in my whole LIFE, and I’m not even going to be involved!’
We walked across to where a small gaggle of girls and parents were assembling. As we did so, she slipped her arm through mine. I knew she wasn’t angry with me; she was just sad and a bit down. Not only did she not really want to go to France in the first place, she now had the best possible reason not to go. But it was part of her A-level course. And it was only ten days, I kept telling myself. She would enjoy it when she got there, I felt sure.
Given Katharine’s excitement at meeting her new brother, I had wondered about seeing if I could meet him sooner, so that perhaps she could meet him too before she left. But I’d opted not to do that, having decided, with Michael’s agreement, that the first meeting needed to be alone – just the two of us. Even had I tried to make it sooner, that would have left little time to cram in another meeting to introduce James and Katharine to each other. We needed to take things one step – one giant step – at a time.
‘I’ll be right by the phone from the minute I g
et home,’ I told her. ‘So you can ring me the very minute you arrive and I’ll be able to sit down and tell you all about him. Okay?’
She sighed resignedly. ‘I suppose it’ll have to be,’ she sniffed, ‘won’t it?’ She looked past me. ‘Ah, there’s Clare!’ She waved at her friend. ‘I guess we’d better get going if we’re going to get a decent seat.’ She threw her arms around me.
‘Safe journey,’ I said. ‘And have a really good trip.’
‘And you have one too, and a brilliant time with James.’ She stood back then and appraised me. ‘You look lovely, Mummy. Perfect. Oh, he’s going to love you so much!’
Chapter Twenty-Two
James and I had agreed to meet up in a hotel in Brentwood, in Essex, because it was halfway between his home in Cambridgeshire and mine in Kent.
It’s a Holiday Inn nowadays, an anonymous-looking, fifties-style, low-rise hotel of the kind you tend to find huddled in groups just off motorways. Then, as now, it was the perfect bolthole for businessmen and an anonymous location for clandestine couples. Back then it was, I think, a Trusthouse Forte, but little different from how it is today.
I’d driven up from Sevenoaks in a Jekyll-and-Hyde frame of mind, my impatience to get there and see my son tempered by waves of anxiety, as all the ‘what ifs’ of the situation, now irreversibly drilled into me by Michael, reminded me that I was off to meet a stranger. Genes and those scant early weeks we’d spent together aside, that was what he was – a man I didn’t know.
Getting ready that morning, I’d been as nervous as any teenager getting ready for a date. I wasn’t playing a part – I could only be what I was, after all – but I was also desperate to impress. How could I not be?
In his mind, as he was growing up, I was the mother who’d given birth to him and then abandoned him. So one of the first things I had to do was set the record straight, and convince him just how much I had loved and yearned for him since. I was also conscious that he must have spent many of those intervening thirty years imagining me, forming a picture in his head, just as I had done of him, without anything to go on but his mirror. How much time had he spent wondering who I was, where I was, how I’d fared and what had become of me?
I thought about his comment that his mother was an ‘Essex Girl’, so I took great trouble not to dress like one, even though I wasn’t completely sure what I’d have worn if I had been one.
Katharine had found the whole thing hilarious. ‘Mummy, stop worrying!’ she’d told me, over and over. ‘He will so blatantly love you!’
I remembered the words in her letter to me: ‘I feel confident, as I hope you do, that he will want to remain in touch with us for the rest of our lives, and just remember if, by any remote, slight, far-off chance, Paul doesn’t want to continue what he’s started, then it’s his loss, because he is missing out on knowing the best mother anyone could have.’ Her words were so sweet, so touching and such a comfort to me.
I kept them in mind now, as I sped round the M25. It was almost 10.00 now, the tail end of the Friday morning rush hour, and I couldn’t get there fast enough. I’d dressed demurely but normally in the end, in clothes that I knew I’d feel relaxed wearing: a crisp white blouse, a navy and green woollen pencil skirt, a navy blazer with brass buttons and penny loafers. I probably looked like a middle-aged woman attending an interview, which, in a way, was precisely what I was doing, wasn’t I? Can I be in your life now? Can I have a role to play? A purpose? Please just like me . . . oh, please learn to love me.
The journey seemed interminable. But it wasn’t quite long enough, paradoxically, because as I pulled off the motorway and approached the hotel car park, I felt as if I were about to sit an important exam but had left all my crib notes at home, that I was winging it, completely unprepared.
What must it be like for him? I wondered as I climbed out of my car. I glanced across at the mass of other vehicles. The hotel must be busy – the car park was almost full. Which one of these might be his, I thought? The big in-your-face BMW? The rugged four by four? The sensible Volvo? Which one? What sort of car might appeal to him?
I locked my own car. Was he even here yet, come to that? Was he an early sort of person or a late sort of person? There were so many little details to be discovered about him. Since he was a policeman, I decided he was probably the former, and I would turn out to be quite wrong.
I checked the time – it was around 10.50. There was no one around and no point in waiting out in the cold. I swung my bag up to my shoulder and strode into the hotel.
The hotel clearly was having some refurbishment work done. There was a ceiling-high dust sheet billowing in the draught created by my entrance, screening off what I imagined was the lounge and bar.
I stood in the lobby, scanning the remaining area for anyone who might be him. I could see no one. Stupidly self-conscious and twitchy with nerves, I went across to a stand full of leaflets for tourists, and began plucking them randomly from their slots. There were lots of them – so much to do in and around Brentwood! – but they were lost on me. I don’t think I read a line. Every few seconds I would glance out of the corner of my eye, trying to spot the face that looked like the one in the photograph.
And then, suddenly, there he was, appearing before me as if by magic, having come from behind the plastic sheeting. There was no way I could ever have mistaken his identity. He was so much my darling son, it made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I savoured every moment of those magical first seconds between seeing him and the instant that our eyes met.
It was one of the most incredible things I can recall feeling ever in my life. It was like seeing myself first – bizarrely – and then my lost baby, repackaged in the form of this stranger. He was so tall, dark and handsome that it left me open-mouthed.
My dear, dear son. I’d imagined so many versions of this encounter over the years, spooled so many movie trailer moments in my head of how I’d be and how he might be and all the things we’d say to each other. But when it came to it, no words were necessary. There was no time for uncomfortable air-kisses or stilted handshaking, and thoughts of exchanging formal words of greeting got swept away. We just met in the middle and fell into one another’s arms. As I hugged him, all I could think of was that terrible day at the Crusade of Rescue, and the kiss I hadn’t been able to place on his cheek. To be able to kiss him now felt like a miracle.
I don’t know what anyone must have thought had they seen us – a smart middle-aged woman embracing a good-looking young man. But, actually, would they have thought anything? That we were mother and son was so gloriously evident.
When we separated, both of us were crying.
‘I wasn’t going to do that,’ James said gruffly. ‘I had promised myself I wasn’t going to do that.’
I was already rummaging in my handbag for tissues for us both. ‘I’m so glad you did,’ I replied.
How do you cover thirty years in an afternoon? It’s impossible, but we did our very best to.
‘It was in Turkey,’ James explained, after we’d revisited almost everything in our letters to each other, and more, ‘where that photo I sent you was taken. That was when I finally made my mind up. I’d spent so long wanting to, really wanting to, and then – well, just failing to find the courage, I guess. I was just too terrified of being told to go away.’
‘Oh, how I wish,’ I said, ‘how I so wish you could have known how much I longed for that to happen. I can’t tell you how much.’
‘Well, you have Karen to thank,’ he said. ‘She was the one who made it happen. Because that was what she said, pretty much. How did I know I’d be rejected? Why was I so sure you’d turn me away? And she was right. I’d never really thought of it that way – you know, seen it from that standpoint. For all I thought about you, I suppose it had never occurred to me to see it from a mother’s point of view.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps it needed a woman’s imagination. The way Karen put it to me, it seemed so much less terrifying. She said that if she put
herself in your shoes – you know, given the time we were in then, the social mores, the conventions – she couldn’t imagine having to give a child up and not spending every day after that wondering about them, worrying about them, hoping for a chance to find them again one day.’
‘Three cheers for Karen, then,’ I said. ‘No, make it four!’
‘So I did it right away,’ he went on, ‘before I could chicken out again. Almost the day after we got back I think it must have been, I got on to the Crusade of Rescue. And then I went there and saw your file, and it was just so incredibly emotional. You know, finding out what they knew about you, that you had two brothers and so on. And that was emotional in itself, knowing I had these two uncles and wondering if they even knew of my existence. Weird. And I’m so sorry your mother’s gone. I would have liked to meet my grandmother.’
‘I would, too,’ I said, ‘I really would have loved her to meet you. I think knowing we’d found each other would have been so precious to her. I’m sure it would have gone a long way towards assuaging her guilt.’
He picked up his coffee and drained the cup – we must have been on our fourth now. Plus we’d had prawn sandwiches – what a joy that we both liked prawn sandwiches. We continued to make all sorts of joyful discoveries about each other and how alike we were in so many little ways.
‘But listen,’ he said now, his expression serious, ‘I really must make it clear to you that I don’t want to disrupt your life. Not for a minute. Not if this, well, you know, isn’t what you want. I mean, for me, this is the best thing imaginable – meeting you, getting to know you – but I don’t want you to feel pressured or for this to cause problems within your family. I would hate that. It wouldn’t be fair.’
I could imagine him speaking to Frances Holmes about this. My heart went out to him for saying what must have been such a difficult thing to contemplate: that, having found me, I might want to put him back in a box marked ‘the past’. ‘James, believe me,’ I said, once again having to reach for tissues. ‘That couldn’t be further from the truth. I have longed for this day. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express to you quite how much. Just ask Michael – my husband. He’s known about you all along. And he’s been such a support to me. As have my whole family – both those brothers, especially, and my lovely sisters-in-law. You might not have been with us physically, but you’ve always still been with us, you know, in our hearts. And as for Kate—’
The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers Page 20
