Who Was Angela Zendalic

by Mary Cavanagh

  Early October 1953

  Jericho

  Ted was puzzled. It had been four months since Peggy’s shock announcement that ‘she’d met her future husband’, but apart from attending church on Sundays she was showing no signs of a social life. Not even with the Commonwealth Club. Maybe her big romance had fizzled out. He hoped so, but he needed an excuse to go round and find out. Loud sigh. He could think of nothing. But then, from his bedroom window, a solution presented itself.

  ‘Hello, Peg,’ he beamed. ‘I’ve just popped round to tell you the felt’s lifting on your shed roof. Needs fixing urgently. Can I take a look?’

  ‘That’s nice of you, Ted. Come in for a cuppa.’

  After a balancing act with a ladder, Ted rubbed his hands. ‘No sweat. I’ll fix it one day when you’re at work.’

  ‘And let me have the bill.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. A favour for a friend.’

  Once sitting over teacups he diffidently began his practiced piece. ‘Long time no see, Peg. How’s life, then?’

  ‘Very good,’ she said, adjusting a thick baggy cardigan over the top of a pinafore dress. ‘I’m off on a course soon. Six months secondment to Library School. Hope to get my own branch after that.’

  ‘That’s good.’ He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Peg, the thing is ...The thing is that when I asked you back in June, about us like, you said you’d met someone and was hoping to get married. Now you’re off to do some training, and quite honestly there’s no sign of him, is there.’

  Peggy’s face remained blank. ‘You’re right. There’s no sign of him. He went back to his own country and we called it off.’

  ‘Then might we ...Could you possibly reconsider?’

  ‘Ted, it would be so easy to say yes. Admit we’re both lonely and try to make a good fist of it, but the answer’s still got to be no. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Alright. I won’t ask again, but you can always look on me as a friend. If there’s anything you need, just ask. I’ve no-one to spend my wages on and nothing to buy.’ He stood up sharply. ‘Right. I’ll get on with the roof as soon as I can. Stay where you are. I’ll let myself out.’ As he walked to the door he glanced back. Her face was turned away from him, and he thought she was crying, but there was no point in hanging around. He felt like crying himself.

  Mid-November 1953

  Jericho

  The minute Ted came in from work, Edie pounced. ‘Ah, there you are. I need an urgent job doing. That big rose bush by the fence blew down in the night. Tie it up for me, would you.’

  ‘But it’s pitch black and everything’s sodden. Can’t it wait ’til the morning?’

  ‘No it can’t. Every time I go out to get some coal I get it in the eye.’

  ‘Okey Dokey.’

  Carrying a small stool, and a ball of string, he went out into the garden and stepped up to the sopping wet bush, fumbling to girdle it. But, as he wound the twine onto an old nail, he could see into Peggy’s kitchen through a gap in the flimsy curtains. She was preparing her evening meal and she neither saw nor heard him. Jesus bloody Christ! He tried to convince himself he was seeing things, but she was stopped by the sink, resting her hand on the round swelling of her belly. Hardly able to breathe, he carefully descended, trying to be silent, but his legs had become weak and shaky. The stool suddenly slipped, skidding to the side with a scraping sound, and he fell off, landing heavily onto his hands.

  Ted found he was numb with shock. The bastard had obviously got her up the spout and done a runner. Poor Peggy. A war widow, just about, so hardly a virgin, but women like Peg didn’t pull up their skirts at the drop of a hat. She must, he concluded, have been forced into it. Dare he use the word rape? He washed and changed. ‘Just off round to Peg’s, Edie.’

  She opened the door wearing a pleated skirt, and the same thick baggy cardigan she’d worn of late. Obvious why now, and it was doing its job well. ‘Hello, Ted. Come in. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘You sit down. I’ll make it.’ He returned with a tray and poured the tea. ‘Any news about your big adventure?’

  ‘I’m off next weekend, and two Indian men from the Commonwealth Club are moving in to help pay the bills.’

  ‘But I think you have got some other news?’

  She looked puzzled. ‘Nothing I can think of.’

  ‘Then your memory’s failing. Stand up, Peg.’ She looked alarmed and remained seated. ‘I said stand up, Peg.’ His voice was quiet, but with the iron-hard intonation of PC Rawlings. She stood up. ‘Take that cardigan off.’ Peggy dropped her eyes and didn’t move. ‘Take it off before I do it for you. I know what’s underneath.’

  She slowly undid the buttons, and stood for a brief moment before sitting down again. ‘Happy now? I’m twenty-four weeks gone. Due the middle of February. Obviously no-one knows, not even Dr Peck.’ She knitted her fingers and swallowed. ‘I went up to London to see a private doctor in Harley Street, just to make sure all was well, and it is, but ...I can hardly bear to talk about it. He offered to get rid of it for me. He thought that was why I’d come. How can these people act like criminals? How could I do that to my own flesh and blood? I was so disgusted I got up and walked out. Oh, Ted, please promise me it goes no further than these four walls?’

  Sweating profusely, he loosened his tie and tried to compose himself. ‘Peg, I promise you faithfully on my police badge that I won’t tell a soul, but I’d like to tear the bastard’s eyes out. Tell me the truth. Were you raped?’

  ‘Oh, no, no. He didn’t force himself on me. He loved me, and I loved him. I was willing.’

  ‘I just never thought…’

  ‘No. No-one would think that I was that sort of woman.’

  ‘Then where is he? If he was so in love with you why can’t he come back and marry you.’

  ‘He doesn’t know, and he never will. He’s gone away forever and there’s no hope of contacting him.’ She moved to the kitchen dresser where Joseph’s ring was placed in an eggcup. ‘He sent me this. We really were going to get married, but his family are very powerful and they’ve forbidden him to leave.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Well, there’s no training course, as you might have guessed. I’ve given in my notice – said I had to go down to Devon to nurse a sick old aunt. Adoption’s the only answer, isn’t it? I’ve got a place at a mother and baby home in London and I’m off at the end of the month. One of those the church arranges for what they call girls in trouble. I bet I’m the oldest one there.’

  ‘Can we write to each other?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but I’ll send mine to you at the station. Just in case Edie gets a bit too nosey.’

  ‘How will you manage?’

  ‘I’ll have the rent from the two students, and I’ve always saved my widow’s pension for a nest egg.’ She then began to quietly cry. ‘I want to keep it. I love it already. It’s a tiny little person and it moves inside me as gently as a butterfly. It turns over and over ...’

  There was a long silence while Ted cleared his throat and spread his large hands on the wooden tabletop. ‘Then I have a solution. I know you don’t love me, Peg. Not in the way I want you to, but my offer’s still open. We can get married. Quick-like. Everyone will count the months, and have a sly dig that we’ve been at it, but so what. I’ll bring the baby up as mine. No-one will know. Please Peg.’

  She drew in a shuddering breath and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘You’re a wonderful man, but we can’t. It wouldn’t work.’

  ‘It will. It will.’

  ‘Ted. Joseph is an African. You won’t be able to pass a coloured baby off as yours, will you?’

  Ted groaned, and visibly reddened. ‘No I won’t, will I.’

  April 2014

  Monks Bottom

  As we calmed down, each of my sisters slowly read my birth certificate intently, as if they might find a hidden clue of explanation, but they did pick up on something I’d not registered in m
y shock; whilst Pa’s address was listed as Tavistock College, Oxford, Angela’s had been given as Stable Cottage, Folly Farm, Fair Cross Green; a village only three miles away where Carrie had lived for many years. The twins were all for jumping in the car, and driving over – might she or her family still live there? – but Carrie reminded us that the smallholding had been demolished yonks ago, and the land used to build the Health Centre.

  I looked up at a framed photograph of us all that hung on the wall, professionally taken in 1988 for Pa’s fiftieth birthday, when I was fifteen. ‘It was so obvious, really,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t I ever suspect? Look at you three. Small and pretty, clones of Mummy, and there’s me at the front with a chubby face and brown curls.’

  ‘Ah, but you were always the real beauty,’ said Carrie. ‘You still are. Catherine Zeta Jones the second.’

  I exhaled slowly and my brow tightened. ‘Why didn’t she keep me? Was I a secret she hid from her family? I must have been only days old when Mummy and Pa took me on together, so where did she go? Why did she go? How many people knew the truth at the time? It’s only Mummy who can tell me and there’s no hope of that.’

  In an attempt to lighten our mood we picked aimlessly at some picnic food the girls had brought, trying to heartily break bread together, but we finished a couple of bottles of wine, and slowly turned the pages of the family photo albums. My sisters, commenting with overstated assurance (or perhaps surprise), of how much I looked like Pa, ‘from the side and round the chin’, and ‘you’ve definitely got his eyebrows and ears’. What, I wondered, were the parts of me that came from the mysterious Angela?

  In the middle of the afternoon a strong sun came out, and we took a long, arm-linked walk around the garden; the lasting monument to our dear destroyed mother, and soon, to our utter misery, to be sold to strangers. With spirits uplifted by its beauty we strolled down to the lower woodland, and just as we crossed the bridge the Scottish gardener suddenly appeared. He stopped when he saw us and I began to introduce him to my sisters. ‘Girls, this is ...’ To my shame I’d forgotten his name.

  ‘Howie Sinclair,’ he said.

  ‘This is Howie Sinclair, who helped me so kindly on the day Pa died.’ To my further shame I’d not sought him out to thank him, although I’d seen him at the funeral, standing at the back of the church. With a full crush of invited guests, and the High Street lined with a long overflow of the press and village residents I remembered wondering how he’d got in, but it was obvious that dear Father Crowley had allocated him a place in recognition of his calm assistance. My sisters immediately launched into patronising speeches of overflowing gratitude, but he just nodded modestly.

  ‘How long do you think you can you stay on here?’ asked Carrie. ‘We rather need someone to make sure the garden’s kept in order while the house is on the market.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be around for a gae few weeks yet. I’ve a dissertation to write and I’ll be moving on after that.’

  ‘That’s good news,’ she beamed. ‘We’ll firm up with Father Crowley.’

  He offered no further attempt at small talk, so we nodded polite goodbyes and slowly ambled off to enjoy the massed primroses that bordered the stream. ‘A dissertation,’ said Cass, when he was well out of earshot. ‘Crumbs. There’s posh, as mummy would say.’

  ‘You seem surprised he can read and write,’ giggled Cally. ‘I wonder what his problem was. Any idea, Sarah?’

  I shook my head. ‘Father Crowley says their past lives are permanently erased like Russian dissidents, and I wouldn’t dream of asking.’

  As we returned to the house the sunshine began to fade, and with teenage children and husbands to return to, it was time for the trio to make tracks. ‘Let’s arrange our next meeting by email, shall we,’ said Cally. ‘We’ve got quite a few performance dates to juggle round, but it’ll have to be soon.’

  I nodded. ‘And in the meantime I’ll be trying to find Angela. All public records are on-line now so I can get cracking.’

  ‘Are you quite sure you have to start this search,’ said Cass. ‘It might lead to a load of misery.’

  ‘It’s a chance I’ll have to take.’

  We parted with affection, and gentle assurances of unity, but just before the three comfortable saloon cars crunched down the drive, Carrie, as senior spokesperson, and whose barrister husband Gerry was the executor of Pa’s Will, called us all to order. ‘Sorry to have to mention this but are we agreed that Gerry gets some estate agencies on the job.’ We all nodded slowly, reluctant to contemplate or accept the reality of the situation.

  After much hugging and reassuring words of love, my sisters left. I then locked the front door and heaved up on my bike, but as I freewheeled down Abbots Hill, to collect the boys from ‘after school club’, I would now have four precious minutes of uninterrupted peace to contemplate the shock news of the day. ‘Who on earth was, or still is, Angela Zendalic?’

  Mid December 1953

  Kensal Green, West London

  The St. Olave’s Home for Unmarried Mothers was situated in a large Gothic house on a busy main road in Kensal Green, West London, and was run by the Anglo-Catholic Sisters of Mercy. But Peggy, now known by her legal married name of Mrs Margaret Davidson, soon found there was no mercy offered, with each sad incumbent browbeaten to accept that sin had been the master of their fate. How she loathed its soulless ambience, with every lonely hour being a whip of degradation. The early rising, the daily exhaustion of unnecessary cleaning, and the sterile silence of shame. As a Christian she’d always empathised with outsiders, like Joseph and his fellow exiles, and gave of herself with cheerful kindness, but now she knew what it really was like to be castigated and excluded. She was a wicked, feckless offender, with her supercilious keepers offering no compassion or sympathy. The growing baby inside her a mere poisonous display of her disgrace, and even her medical notes stated a further indictment of her sordid conduct.

  Mrs Davidson is of mature years and was widowed in the war. The baby’s father is said to be an African Negro who has, typically, abandoned her. The child will, naturally, be offered for adoption.

  The rules of the home (in order to exclude any putative fathers who might cause disruption) were that only close relations be allowed to visit by strict appointment, and Ted was shown in by the grim Sister Martha. ‘Your brother, Mrs Davidson.’ The shabby reception room was empty, apart from some hard upright chairs arranged around the walls, but a small Christmas tree, carelessly decorated with orange paper chains, stood crookedly in a corner. As the only occupant she must have looked pathetic, sitting close to a mean fire, knitting a small white garment, and resting her needles on the large mound she now carried beneath a faded maternity smock.

  ‘How are you, Peg?’ He kissed her lightly on the cheek, and placed a brown paper parcel on a chair beside her. ‘Happy Christmas, love.’

  ‘Thanks, Ted.’ She knew her face reflected a deep depression, but it was too entrenched to try and pull herself out of it.

  ‘Are you keeping well?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Is there anything you want or need?’ She shook her head, unable to volunteer any more conversation.

  ‘Cheer up, girl.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Stan and Edie got your card.’

  ‘Do they know you’ve come to see me?’

  He nodded. ‘I said we were meeting up West and going to see a show. They’ve popped a little present in the parcel for you. They’re really impressed you’re spending Christmas at a posh hotel in Brighton.’

  ‘Very posh here, isn’t it? The sea view, and the sound of the gulls.’

  ‘Right. I’ve had enough. Come on. You’re not an invalid. Get your coat. It’s quite mild and dry outside.’

  Ted was right. It was unusually mild for mid-December, and although Harrow Road still showed evidence of wartime bomb damage, with its bare, razed areas, and the blackened ruin of a church, it was making an attempt to look Christmassy. Fai
ry lights, Santas, reindeers, and nativity groups were displayed in every shop window, but it was still full of the usual careworn shoppers on their daily duties. Tired looking mothers pushed prams and trailed pasty-faced children. The elderly, with walking sticks and string shopping bags, made slow progress. Unkempt florid men came out of the pubs, soggy dog ends clamped between their lips, and winding grubby mufflers around their necks.

  Ted breathed in deeply and coughed as endless traffic belched out the stink of post war petrol. ‘Ah, the familiar smell of London,’ he declared. ‘No wonder they call it The Smoke, but it’s something that’s seeped in your bones to us locals. I was brought up quite near here. In East Acton, near the White City...’ He went on, talking more to fill up the silence than for real information.

  Peggy began to revive, finding herself happy to be in the open air, and becalmed by Ted’s idle chatter. She began to enjoy the feel of this large, kindly man on her arm, feeling normal, knowing that passers-by would imagine they were a married couple in love, proudly displaying their child to come. But he was Ted – a burly Anglo-Saxon with a thick-neck, and receding sandy hair. She looked straight ahead, fantasising that he was a tall, graceful African.

  ‘Fancy a cuppa, duck? I’m parched.’ Ted steered her into a small cafe, found two seats in an alcove, and went up to the counter. ‘Two teas, please, and a couple of those Eccles cakes,’

  ‘Go and sit down,’ the assistant said. ‘I’m just brewing up.’

  The cafe was hot and steamy and Peggy removed her coat, sitting down to lay her hands on her mound. The familiar pushes and pokes of tiny limbs strained against her sides, and then a wobbling little shudder as the baby changed position. Ted sat down beside her, smiling with wonder at the visible rippling movements. ‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘Talk about fighting to get out. It’s wonderful, isn’t it. The precious gift of life. I...well I missed all that.’