No One Wants You

by Celine Roberts

  I felt that everyone was against me.

  Harry’s friends felt that I owed it to him and Anthony to have the termination. My friends were leaving it up to me. I said that I could not destroy a life under any circumstances. In desperation, I phoned Father Bernard, late one evening, and told him of my predicament. He was a great support, and told me that whatever my final decision was, he would stand by me. That was what I needed to hear.

  First thing the next morning, I discharged myself from Westminister Hospital. I went home and prayed. I prayed that whatever handicap, physical or mental, that my child might be burdened with, that God would give me the necessary strength to cope with it. In any event, God had other plans.

  One night, about 12 weeks into the pregnancy, I started to haemorrhage. Once more, I was admitted to St George’s Hospital, Tooting, as an emergency.

  They could not save the baby.

  1977 was another sad year in my history.

  ELEVEN

  A Place to Call Home

  THE NEW YEAR of 1978 dawned. I decided to try and put 1977 behind me. I had lost two babies but I really wanted another one. Anthony was now three years of age. He was enrolled at a local nursery school and seemed happy there.

  The New Year optimism had me thinking that I might become pregnant again. I wanted a brother or sister for Anthony, so that he could learn to share. I did not want him to grow up as an only child. I had an obsession with the fact that only children can be selfish. They don’t want to share. It is entirely understandable to me now why they should do this, but at the time I did not like the trait.

  My wish list for 1978 also included our own house. I wanted to buy a house for us, but I realised that to buy our own house I had to have a lot of money. Saving was never one of my strong points. Saving money was a subconscious acknowledgement of the fact that I might need or have use for it in the future. The reality for me was that I did not expect to have a future. The monotonous repetition of the fact that I was no good and that no one wanted me, meant that I had no hope for any kind of a positive future.

  Having a child changed this. He gave me a sense of hope for his future, a hope I had never had for myself. Anthony’s existence made me feel a sense of responsibility. I wanted my child to have everything that I did not have. He had a mother and a father. That was a good start.

  The next thing that he needed was a house. He needed somewhere that he could call ‘home’. A house of his own would provide him with far more than just the basic human needs of shelter and warmth.

  It would be somewhere he would feel safe and could come to, in times of danger.

  It would be somewhere he would be accepted unconditionally and be loved by his father and mother.

  It would be his family home.

  The first problem was money. We didn’t have nearly enough! The building society told me that if I could raise 20 per cent of the purchase price, they would loan us the remaining 80 per cent as a mortgage. In order to save money for a deposit on a house, I started to work extra shifts at the hospital. Doing extra shifts at work also helped me to forget the trauma of the lost babies. Between working such long hours and looking at suitable properties to live in, I recovered from my loss to some extent.

  In October 1978, after spending most of the year saving, we bought our first family home. We got a loan of £2000 from a friend of Harry. They were both members of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association and she held him in high regard. We got a loan of £600 from Austin, Harry’s brother-in-law. I myself had £2500 in savings for a rainy day. I decided that the rainy day had arrived.

  I was so proud. The house we bought cost us £15,000. We arranged a mortgage of £9000. We moved in and I busied myself with buying furniture. Harry carried out any small repairs and painted the entire house from top to bottom. Things seemed to be going all right for a while. But then I found another lump in my right breast.

  I felt cheated once again.

  I went to St George’s Hospital in Tooting, where they at once referred me to a consultant called Mr Gazet. He recommended a partial mastectomy. He carried it out himself two days later. I found him to be extremely supportive. Mr Gazet continues to check me on a regular basis to this day.

  Once that was over with, we fully settled into the house. I concentrated on making a home for the three of us. I felt so whole, so satisfied at being a mother. I continued to work nights at the hospital and look after Anthony during the day. My work continued to be my form of running away from any emotional problems that I might have. While at work, I was completely absorbed in what I was doing. I could not be distracted.

  Or so I thought.

  The distraction materialised in the form of a beautiful baby boy of about six months of age, called James. He arrived on my ward at work suffering from a life-threatening enteritis. As he recovered, over a period of about two weeks, he became the focus of the entire nursing staff. Every nurse loved him and gave him their every attention. He responded to that attention by recovering into a thriving, active, laughing baby boy.

  When his mum came to visit him, you could see the bond between them. He loved her with a ferocity that can only be generated and nurtured by a parent for its child. She used to hold him up in her arms, a few inches from her face and pucker up her lips, as if to kiss him. When she did that, he used to throw his arms in the air, beam his widest smile for her and launch himself forward with such enthusiasm, as if saying, ‘If there is a kiss on offer, I am definitely coming in for it.’

  I witnessed their bond from an emotional distance, until one day I was coming on duty and I walked into a commotion at the nurses’ station. Veronica, the mother of baby James, was at the centre of it.

  James was now well and healthy. He was due to be discharged that day. When it came to discharge him into his mother’s care, it was found that she had no home to take him to. The hospital would not discharge a six-month-old baby to a homeless mother. He would have to be put into care. It all unfolded in front of me. Veronica was a nineteen-year-old single mum. She had given birth to James in Ireland and had run away to London. She was staying at a hostel that would not allow babies. She had no money. But she did not want to be parted from her son. She was putting up a loud fight for him, but it wasn’t enough. The hospital was adamant, she had no home address to go to, consequently they would not discharge James to her care. As the duty sister lifted the phone to call social services and put an end to the argument, I piped up, ‘She does have an address; she can stay with me at my house.’

  The entire crowd turned to look in my direction.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You don’t even know her.’

  ‘This would be above and beyond the call of duty.’

  Even Veronica was gaping at me, with her mouth open. It was true that I did not know her at all, but I had seen her interact with her son. I saw how she was so concerned when he was near death with the enteritis. I saw how much he loved her and how he wanted to be with her, when he had recovered. I thought, ‘I cannot allow this boy to grow up without his mother!’ I knew the possible hardships and difficulties that could lie ahead for him and I did not want anything to happen to him. I was determined that they would not be separated.

  The duty sister wrote my address on the discharge form and a crisis was averted.

  I called Harry and told him that Veronica and baby James were coming to live with us. I didn’t ask him, I told him. He was always very generous in that regard. He said that it was not a problem. He never objected. He never complained how long anyone stayed at our house.

  Mother and baby came to live at our house. It was a lovely time. They stayed for six months while Veronica got back on her feet. She got herself a job and a flat where she could raise baby James without being separated from him.

  James is now a healthy adult man in his twenties who still loves his mum and sees her often. To this day, Veronica remains one of my close friends. While I have never told her all the facts about my past, exce
pt in general terms or in vague detail, I think she subsequently suspected that my empathy in her time of crisis was not entirely unfounded.

  She bounces into my life about two or three times each year. I treasure her company dearly. She is not intrusive. She never asks me any difficult questions. She is always lighthearted and outgoing. She makes me laugh. I think myself that she is really keeping an eye on me, just to see that I am okay.

  After work I used to be so engrossed in caring for my beautiful son that my mind never had any inclination to wander. Any time left over was used up with sleep, to regenerate my tired body. As things settled down again, I did manage to find a small bit of time to renew my friendship with Kit and Tony in Buttevant. Over the years, since I left the orphanage, I had lost touch with them. I was not a great letter writer. The only person that I used to correspond with regularly was Father Bernard. I wrote mainly in response to his letters, probably out of guilt, as he would continually remind me that I had not answered earlier letters.

  Once communications had been restored between Kit and me, it was as if we had never lost contact. I invited herself and Tony to visit us in London. They came for a week, in the summer of 1979. It was as if they were my own family. We all became really close during that week.

  I was so relieved when 1979 came and went, without any bad emotional trauma. If it had remained so, I would probably have convinced myself that I was happy with what I had. In truth, I would have only been fooling myself.

  TWELVE

  PUSHING the Odds

  I WAS PREGNANT again, for a fourth time.

  I was due in hospital on the evening of Sunday September 14, 1980.

  Harry drove me there. Kit and Tony, who were staying with us while I was in hospital, came along as well and stayed while I was admitted.

  As soon as the battery of admission tests began, I asked who the anaesthetist would be. As a nurse, I was very particular about whom I wanted on my case and who I did not want on my case. I wanted no mistakes. I had a healthy baby in my uterus, and I wanted him to land in this world in the same healthy condition. The short journey from uterus to life outside can be fraught with error. I wanted all possible mistakes eliminated, not just minimised.

  I also asked if Professor Trussell, my gynaecologist, was going to deliver the baby himself. The midwifery staff were unable to tell me there and then, who would be the overall consultant for my delivery. I was somewhat nervous under the circumstances and because of my history, I became extremely agitated at the lack of clarity regarding my case.

  Kit tried to reassure me with, ‘Don’t worry Craythur, shure won’t you have it all over with shortly.’

  This just made me feel more aggressive.

  At this stage Harry took control. He must have recognised my aggression from some previous encounter and realised that I was best left alone to deal with it. He swept Kit and Tony out through the door of the ward, so fast that they never had a chance to say goodbye. Harry said that he would be back later.

  An anaesthetist appeared. After speaking with him, I calmed down. He offered me a range of options for my anaesthetic. We agreed that it would not be a general anaesthetic, unless complications arose. A spinal epidural was agreed on, mutually. As I lay there in bed, I prayed to God that everything would work out well for the following day.

  As I was about to fall off to sleep, a head with two glaring eyes popped through the door. The eyes moved from side to side, checking out the immediate area, as if they belonged to someone in a detective movie. Then the rest of Harry’s body came crashing through the double doors of the ward, with the sound of Kit’s admonishing voice following closely behind, ‘Would ya get in there, and don’t be actin’ the eejit.’

  They brought Anthony in as well. We talked for a little while. I kissed Anthony goodnight and then they all left.

  When they were gone, I once again felt all alone in the world. I burst into floods of tears.

  On a practical level, I was happy that the technicalities involved in the delivery were sorted out. On an emotional level, I cried all the time. Even though they had all been in to visit me, I felt that I was on my own again, left to cope by myself. I wanted my mother to be with me! At difficult times in my life, my mother was never there for me. I always imagined that my mother could make things right. I wanted somebody strong to ask the questions that I felt fearful or intimidated about asking.

  As with Anthony’s birth, my next baby’s time of arrival into the world was also predetermined. With the lower half of my body numbing up, I was wheeled into theatre at 9.30 am, on the dot. A baby son was delivered alive and healthy by Caesarean section by 9.35 am. Somewhere in the five-minute interim as I was awake, I heard one of the theatre staff, a colleague that I knew well, say jokingly, ‘Celine wants a daughter, so if it is a boy, stuff him back in.’

  I even muttered back to her, ‘That is not true. I do not care as long as the baby is alive and well.’

  I was aware of them lifting something out of my uterus and in one fell swoop they landed a baby boy on my chest. As I was looking at him, the nurse in me took over, ‘He looks as blue as a bluebird, he must be cyanosed. He needs oxygen.’

  As a result of the nurse’s joking comment, I felt a really strong urge to protect my baby, whatever its sex. They then separated our umbilical cord. I do not recall any sense of pain, either physical or emotional, on separation. I do remember a sense of relief and spiritual gratitude that my baby had arrived safely.

  The staff then took him away to be checked out by the paediatrician. With that, the surgeon announced to the staff, ‘That’s it.’

  Then a porter wheeled me back to my room. I felt that it had all taken just a matter of minutes. My baby was brought back to me in my room after about 30 minutes. A nurse said, ‘You have a normal healthy baby boy and he weighs 7lb. 3oz.’

  I was elated. I was so happy to have a normal healthy son. I thought he was so beautiful. He had a head of dark hair. I thought that he looked like a ‘real little individual’, with Harry’s colouring. I checked him out myself. I began to count his toes. I checked the number of fingers. I checked all digits to make sure he had the correct number. The numerical audit revealed that all were present and correct. I hugged and kissed him and welcomed him to my world. I promised him that I would always take care of him and love him.

  I named my new son Ronan Gerard. While I received lots of congratulations and cards when Anthony was born, I was virtually deluged with gifts and cards when Ronan was born.

  Kit brought Anthony in to the hospital to see his new baby brother and me. Anthony was wearing a red T-shirt that I had bought him weeks earlier. It had the words ‘I want I want’ emblazoned across his chest. I remember saying to him as soon as I saw it, ‘You’ve got, you’ve got.’ Harry came with them to see Ronan for the first time. He looked at him and smiled. I was a bit disappointed by his reaction. He seemed totally nonplussed by the fact that he was the father of a second son.

  Ronan and I remained at the hospital for seven days. Those seven days are a blur of so many friends and other people’s relatives coming to visit me. The time in hospital also included the usual instruction of ‘how to bath a baby’ which I went along with for the sake of peace and quiet.

  All my time was spent bonding with Ronan. Of course I cried at the ‘drop of a hat’, once again. I found it so emotional. His little cradle was right by my bed. I attached two or three religious artefacts to his cradle, which I believed would protect my son. I was scared stiff that any harm might befall him so I felt that I needed all the help I could get, whether human or spiritual. I had waited so long for him. I felt that I really was blessed to be given another child. If any harm came to him, I could never forgive myself.

  Finally, the day came when we were discharged from St George’s. Before we left, the paediatrician gave Ronan a final check-over. ‘He will be a brain surgeon or a pianist, because he has such long and delicate fingers,’ were his parting words.

  As we w
ere standing by the lift, on our way out, Ronan joined his hands, as if in prayer, and I remember thinking, ‘He will be a priest.’

  Harry drove us home. When we arrived, many of our neighbours were there to see my new son. I was pleased to be home. Kit took over and did everything for me in the house. She really mothered me for the next few weeks and over that time the household routine returned to normal. It was a great change but I still couldn’t help wishing that I had my own mother there. When Kit saw that things were running fine, she and Tony returned home to Ireland.

  I went back to work six weeks after Ronan was born. Before I started back, I advertised for a childminder to come to our house for three days a week. I chose a mature lady called Margaret, who was in her sixties, from a group of four interviewees, as the most suitable. She used to come from 10 am to 3 pm because I was working night duties. When she arrived at 10 am, I would have Ronan bathed and ready for her. Then I would go to bed until 2 pm.

  Even though another person was looking after him, I felt I was with him, because we were in the same house. If he was crying, I would wake up. I would go down to him and investigate the reason.

  When Margaret left at 3 pm, I used to take Ronan with me to collect Anthony from school. We all came home from school together, and I prepared dinner for the four of us. We ate dinner when Harry arrived home from work. I would bath both sons and prepare them for bed. Then all four of us were loaded into Harry’s old Ford Escort and the whole family drove me to work at the hospital for 8.15 pm. I would work the night duty until 7.45 am. I took a bus home in the mornings. I usually arrived home about 8.30 am. As soon as I arrived in, Harry would leave for work. I would then wrap Ronan up in his pram and we would take Anthony to school. We used to say our morning prayers on the way to school. As soon as I had safely dispatched Anthony at the school, Ronan and I turned on our heels and returned home, to be on time for Margaret. I headed for bed for a well-earned, if short sleep, and the daily cycle began once more. I worked the night shift four nights, on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday each week, on a full-time basis, for ten years, without a pause. Sometimes it was very hard but I still loved nursing, as it gave me a sense of purpose and the friendships I had made there meant a lot to me.