The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers

by Angela Patrick

  ‘Is she okay with this? I mean, really okay? I can’t wait to meet her, but is she really all right? Surely she must feel some resentment about me coming into your life? It must be difficult for her, especially if she’s been brought up an only child, surely?’

  I shook my head. ‘She couldn’t be more excited about meeting you. She can’t wait.’ I told him about having to wave her off before coming to meet him, and how much she had wished she could be with us instead. ‘Honestly,’ I said, ‘she thinks you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to her – and I mean that. Those were her exact words.’

  He frowned. ‘Oh, dear, I have a lot to live up to, then. I hope I don’t prove to be a massive disappointment!’

  We talked for hours, until the lunch crowd had been replaced by the afternoon stragglers, and by the time we started to think about leaving, the early evening gaggles of men in suits, carrying briefcases, were beginning to congregate too. We were oblivious to them all, our attention wholly on each other.

  It was dark when we emerged and walked back to the car park. His car, it turned out, had been a nondescript Vauxhall. ‘Police car,’ he clarified, with a wink, ‘an unmarked one. But hang on,’ he said then, as we reached my car, which was nearer. ‘I’ve got something for you. I’ll be back in just a tick.’

  I watched as he loped off to his car in the darkness, thrilling again at our physical similarities. My son. This was my son. I couldn’t stop marvelling at the fact. And as I watched him go, I was already imagining telling Michael and Katharine – especially Katharine, whom I now needed to get home for. It was getting late, and I couldn’t miss her call. I really mustn’t, and in France, of course, she’d already be an hour ahead of me. He’s gorgeous, I would tell her. He’s lovely, he’s funny, he’s clever. He looks like you do! He’ll be a brilliant big brother. You will love him.

  He returned carrying something, and as he got closer I could see it was a bouquet of flowers – lilies and gerberas and beautifully fragrant roses. He handed them to me, looking both pleased as punch and bashful all at once. I loved that. I loved him. It felt as natural as breathing. I took the flowers. There was a card tucked within them, which I could see he had written himself. It read ‘I’m very, very happy for both of us. Yours always, James xxxx’

  For the umpteenth time that day, I was speechless and in tears. How many tears of joy had I shed today, I wondered? And how many more had been shed in wretchedness and sorrow over the years? So many – too many. And as I hugged him once again, I think he must have known what I was thinking, for he put his lips close to my ear and spoke for both of us.

  ‘Drive safely,’ he whispered, as he kissed me farewell. ‘Now I’ve found you, I don’t want to lose you.’

  Epilogue

  In fairy stories, the traditional way to finish is to reassure the reader that all concerned lived happily ever after. And to date, I’m pleased to say, that has mostly been true for us, though our story has not been without further bouts of heartache.

  Finding someone like Michael to share my life with, having my miracle-baby daughter, being blessed with my gorgeous grandchildren – Katharine’s three little ones and James’s two. These are the things that really matter in life. Being reunited with my son, after three decades of longing, was also one of the happiest times imaginable.

  James and I established a relationship, and a friendship, very quickly. Within days of my meeting him, he brought his fiancée Karen down to stay with us, and Katharine was finally able to meet the brother she’d always wanted. It was, for all of us, a very happy time. To see such likenesses, to introduce him to his other extended family and to have him count us as part of his were such enriching and rewarding experiences. Beyond rewarding is how I recall thinking of it at the time.

  We were also invited to James and Karen’s wedding. And it was then, perhaps, that I first had to confront the reality of the life James had led that hadn’t included me. Where those thirty years, in my case, had always been tinged with the continuing pain of his absence, he had felt no such lack; at least not until he’d grown into a teenager and had begun to explore his feelings about where he’d come from and why.

  He’d had a mother and father, a younger sister and a whole coterie of relatives and friends. The only difference between him and any other child of his acquaintance was that there was this ‘other mother’ out there, who had always been a mystery.

  Looking back now, I wonder how his adoptive mother must have felt when she heard we had been invited to James’s wedding. It’s an intense enough time emotionally, seeing your child get married, so for her to have to accommodate as big a thing as James wanting to invite us along too must have been difficult, to say the least.

  To help minimise any possible awkwardness on the day, we had already met James’s parents. He had arranged for Michael and me to go to Cambridgeshire to visit them. By now they were both retired schoolteachers – they’d been quite a bit older than me, obviously – and they couldn’t have been more kind and welcoming. Though James’s father, Michael, had dark hair, his parents bore no physical similarity to him. I wonder how difficult it must have been for them both to see how much James looked like me. Perhaps not at all – they had, after all, entered into the adoption process, just as we had as potential parents, with a clear idea of what might lie ahead. Even so, I could readily put myself in their shoes. This was a turning point in their lives every bit as much as in ours. For me, certainly, it was strange to put faces to the voices that I’d heard all that time ago at the Crusade of Rescue, when I was almost stupefied by pain and mental anguish.

  They’d seen me, they told me, as I’d walked out of the building that afternoon. They’d been in that room, Paul now asleep in his new mother’s arms, when they saw me, lugging my holdall, trudging down the darkening street. They had wondered, as James’s father commented to me when we met him, how I must have been feeling that day.

  But, just as I did, they’d left and got on with their lives, and cherished the son they’d felt so lucky to have been blessed with. Though him wanting to seek me out some day wasn’t inevitable, they’d never shied away from reminding him where he’d come from, and had made it clear that if he did want to find his birth mother, they would never stand in his way. James’s journey to find me, even so, had been a long one. Once he’d made the decision – on the day he’d set the date for his wedding to Karen – the first thing he’d done was tell his parents. As he’d put in his letter, they had never tried to dissuade him, but it had taken a great deal of soul-searching for him to pluck up the courage.

  His fear of rejection by me a second time was too great – and he had reason to suspect that might happen. In 1976, there was a significant change in adoption law. To make it easier for adopted children to trace their birth parents, they now had the legal right of access to their adoption records. But this was not the only change.

  Unbeknown to me, there was another important amendment to the law at around that time. It involved the creation of a new Adoption Register, in which the birth parents of adopted children, previously only traceable with difficulty, could have their names and current contact details put on file. Once he had decided he felt strong enough to accept whatever he uncovered, it was naturally to this document that James first turned. Not finding my name on it – as he wouldn’t, since I didn’t even know of its existence – he could only conclude that his reservations were well founded. To his mind, this was evidence that I was one of the overwhelming majority of birth parents who actively didn’t want to be found.

  Having got that far, however, he had a change of heart. The closer he got to finding me, it seemed, the more he wavered about doing so, as all the negative scenarios dominated his thoughts. Having all but decided to abandon his search, for fear of what he might find, he was persuaded by Karen to carry on. Knowing him as well as she unquestionably did, she knew how troubled he’d always been about not knowing where he came from and how desperately he needed that missing piece o
f the jigsaw in place. So, supported by her, he continued his search, finally realising himself that even if he did get rejected in the end, it was still better than living with the mystery.

  By now he had enough information to pursue things on his own. He had a name – Angela Brown – and my parents’ address in Rayleigh. He knew that I’d been a codes translator, and I had two elder brothers.

  It was here that his job as a policemen was to give James a great advantage over many people seeking lost relatives. One other piece of information he had about me was my national insurance number, as it formed a part of my original records. As a person’s NI number stays with them for life, it’s a good tool, if known, with which to track them down. James was lucky, then; most people don’t have legal access to such information. The world is full of stories of adopted children spending years trying to find their birth parents, only to be too late and find that by the time they’ve been found, they’ve passed on.

  To James’s excitement, however, and my subsequent delight, his position meant he could access an up-to-date address for me straight away. Such was his gratitude at having the tools to do this that he would eventually go on to help Frances Holmes at the Catholic Children’s Society with a number of terribly sad and very urgent cases.

  When James saw an Angela Patrick and Michael Patrick at the address given on the database, his immediate assumption – which was reasonable, based on the scant information he had to go on – was that I was a single mother with another, now adult, child. He was finally decided. What would be, would be. He got back in touch with Frances.

  James could obviously have pursued me himself. There was nothing to stop him from simply writing to me directly, but Frances, with whom he’d initially made contact, had strenuously counselled against it. As an adoption agency, one of the saddest parts of what they did was to help steer a course through the emotional journey adopted children took when they decided to try and find their birth parents.

  As James had told me when we’d got in touch, he was one of the few lucky ones, as almost all of the birth parents who responded (few in themselves) only confirmed what was statistically proven: that they didn’t want to be reunited with the children they’d given up. It was important to the society that they were there for the adoptees, both to be realistic about outcomes and to be there for them in the event of bad news.

  This was why the letter I’d received, so cleverly worded, so cleverly coded, came from Frances, rather than James himself. It was also part of their policy to encourage further correspondence before meetings, to give both adoptee and birth parent a time to think things through – allowing for a ‘cooling-off ’ period – before further life-changing decisions were made.

  Both of us agreed, later, that we had been champing at the bit. But Frances had been right: it was only sensible to proceed slowly.

  But James and I finding one another was, as it turned out, only the beginning of a new story, one that began around the time, in the summer of 1995, when his marriage to Karen sadly broke up. He’d met someone else and was by this time also travelling a great deal with his job. He had done well in the police force, moving up steadily through the ranks, and by now was working undercover much of the time, and out of anyone’s reach for days at a stretch. Understandably, given both his career and his ever-changing locations, it was difficult to find times to get together. We’d often plan trips and visits and, increasingly often, he’d phone to cancel at the last minute.

  I tried hard to be reasonable and philosophical about all this. I would tell myself constantly that having him in my life at all was such a gift. It was something I’d hoped for so much but had never expected, something I had so longed for but knew I had no right to. But no matter how hard or how often I tried to rein in my feelings, they would bubble up unbidden and take me over.

  It came to a head one day, in 1996, during a phone call in which he explained that he had to pull out of a trip to Ireland, which, though nothing major – it was just a couple of days to visit relatives on my mother’s side – had been planned with his agreement. I had just needed to confirm the flight times, which was why I’d called him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he’d told me. ‘But I can’t make it, after all. I know I should have called sooner, but you know how it is.’

  I was devastated to hear this, perhaps wrongly, perhaps irrationally. Did it matter that much? It was only a few days away. But on top of so many other instances of feeling let down and superfluous to him, my emotions got the better of my usual clearheadedness. I’d been longing to show him off to all these members of my family, and I couldn’t seem to get past feeling hurt.

  ‘Yes, perhaps you should,’ I’d answered, irritably. ‘All this time I’ve been waiting to hear, and only now do I find out—’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he interrupted, his tone equally irritable. ‘But I do have another family to think about here. I have commitments. I have a sister. I have other people to see. I have other things in my life apart from you.’

  It was all true, and I didn’t need to be told any of it, really. Even so, I felt summarily dismissed when he said that, as if I were just a minor part of his life, and should know my place.

  ‘I know that,’ I remember saying to him, full of pique. ‘I do. I’m just unhappy at the way you treat me!’

  And then, those fateful words having finally spilled out, I was too upset to go on. I put the phone down.

  It probably had to happen, that phone call that day. Though his words haunted me, and the sense of rejection was so painful, it probably had to happen that I articulated the feelings that had been simmering away in me since the day we had found each other. Perhaps it needed to happen to help me see beyond myself; to think about our unusual situation logically and objectively, to admit to the jealous longing I harboured. Hard though it was, I perhaps needed to realise that though I was his birth mother, I wasn’t his mother. And I had no right to expect him to treat me as such.

  Having thought all this through – and it took me some days and weeks to do so – I decided I wouldn’t make further contact with him. It was so hard, but I felt it was the only thing to do. He knew where I was, he knew how I felt – he knew, without doubt now, just how much I loved him – and if he wanted me in his life again, it must be his choice, not mine. It was not my place to pressure him to see me.

  Weeks passed and turned into months, and still no word came from James. When my birthday came and went with no acknowledgement from him I was wretched.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Michael said. ‘You must make contact. You must. It doesn’t matter how much you feel it ought to be him that does it, who’s suffering here? You are. And I’d bet anything that he is as well. Don’t forget, this situation is not of his making. And remember, he’s had a lifetime of feeling rejected by you. And he has a point, sweetheart. Surely you must see that? It must be hard for him, don’t forget, having to deal with two families – two mothers. So perhaps now is the time to be one to him. Swallow your pride. Risk him rejecting you. Just like he did. Trust me, it will be your loss if you don’t.’

  Michael was right, of course. He always is. But I knew I couldn’t phone James. Couldn’t bring myself to, because I felt much too emotional. So instead, I sat and wrote him a poem.

  And I sent a copy to Katharine, too. She was studying in China by now, and I missed her dreadfully. I was also painfully aware how much all this had impacted on her too. Things not working out between James and me was very difficult for her; having been introduced to and embraced the big brother she’d always dreamed of having, she now had to accept that he was gone again. So, unbeknown to me, she decided to take action. Having read my poem, she decided to call James herself, and said much the same thing to him as Michael had to me. Stop this. Mend this. Don’t be silly.

  And James, to my eternal joy, phoned me.

  Adoption, in many circumstances, is right for all involved. But in other cases, such as mine, and many others like mine at that time, it�
��s the catastrophic beginning of a long, painful journey, the destination of which is unknown. So how can anyone know how to deal with it? How do you make up for all the years you both lost? How do you come to terms with the heartache? How do you deal with the frustrations of the past and find a way, together, to move on from it? There is only one way: truthfully and slowly.

  This time, when we talked, we talked more honestly, I think. James had read my poem over and over, he told me, and had focused on one line particularly. I had written about how I should be content and give thanks for him, not waste time dwelling on what might have been and dreaming of a different outcome. And, given the circumstances of his adoption and his childhood, I must accept that his love was conditional.

  But he surprised me. ‘No,’ he said to me that day. ‘That’s not true. I just needed you to understand my situation, that’s all; how hard it’s been and how complicated it is now. Finding you,’ he told me, ‘was the best thing that ever happened to me. That blood tie’s unbreakable. I think about you. I love you. And that love part, I promise, is unconditional.’

  If ever there was an expression of forgiveness, it was that. So we began again to feel our way together, treading carefully and inching forward slowly.