Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine)

by Margaret Humphreys

  From an early age, I found my parents’ fellow Wesleyans a very bland collection of people: pleasant and easy-going, but unwilling to take a view. They lived in a genteel world where bodily functions didn’t exist and the closest they came to intimacy was shaking hands in church. Nevertheless, I enjoyed Sunday school every week and put some pocket money in an envelope for the National Children’s Home to help deprived children. I wrote long essays on the perils of drinking and gambling and the joys of a sober, honest life. What remained a mystery to me, however, was that while I was being told that drink was the source of most human misery, many neighbours seemed to enjoy themselves immensely in noisy and cheerful pubs like the Sherbrooke Arms at the end of our street. Many was the night I heard a raucous rendering of ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’ resounding from behind its profane doors, and wondered what devilry was going on inside. Was this what he meant when the minister said, ‘Why must the devil always have the best tunes?’

  My parents owned a large Edwardian terrace house on a long road near the river and the playing-fields. Since my grandfather had been well known in business circles it was natural, perhaps, that my father had inherited his outlook as a Conservative voter. It wouldn’t have mattered, had we not been in a predominantly Labour constituency: everyone around us lived in rented accommodation or new council houses. When it was voting day I didn’t dare go outside. All the other people had their red Labour posters on display, while our sitting-room window sported a large, provocative, blue rosette.

  ‘Why aren’t you going out?’ my father asked me during one General Election.

  It never occurred to him that I ran the risk of grievous bodily harm from my school friends! At times I felt isolated in our neighbourhood, but its saving grace was the presence of my wonderful grandmother. Selflessly devoted to her sense of public duty, Grandma had served the St John Ambulance Brigade in a senior role for many years. On Saturdays, I would accompany her as a cadet to local events at the skating-rink or football ground. It was expected that my uniform would be immaculately clean, my badges shining, my black shoes gleaming with polish and my white cap starched so fiercely that it almost cut your hand. Her high standards were softened by her calm temperament and warm, accepting smile. I adored her.

  I attended good local schools and my parents were proud and pleased when I passed exams. They believed that hard work should be rewarded; their maxim was: There’s no such word as can’t. The word is: you can, you will. They drummed this into me day and night, especially my father. I was very shy, and quite happy at home reading books or going for a ride to the Embankment on my treasured Raleigh bicycle. In those days, my bike could be left outside the sweetshop for a few minutes without it being stolen.

  I didn’t want to mix a lot. I’d say, ‘I don’t want to go to that party.’

  ‘You must go, and you will,’ my father would say, in a firm but caring voice, followed by a smile and a wink.

  In his book, there was no such thing as failure. You had to grasp every opportunity with a positive approach. However, I have never felt that I reached my full potential at school. As children growing up in the post-war period, we were expected to breathe life into other people’s hopes and expectations for us. Yet I was too young to remember the war and I had no idea of the hardships earlier generations had endured.

  Although our home enjoyed few modern amenities, it was comfortably furnished with large, dark oak sideboards, cushioned sofas and big open fires. In the evenings we’d listen to The Archers on the radio and when it finished my father would always say, ‘It’s up the wooden hill to bed, young girl.’ Every year, as a family ritual, we’d all listen to the last night of the Proms and feel proud and patriotic.

  I inhabited a secure and relatively restricted little world with my home, school, library and church all within ten minutes’ walking distance. Occasionally, at weekends, I would venture beyond this familiar territory. My father’s saloon car, a black Austin Seven, was his pride and joy. It provided one way of broadening my horizons, though many of our family outings ended with roadside repairs on Trent Bridge rather than the intended picnic in the countryside.

  My parents believed strongly in helping those in less fortunate circumstances. My mother would not hesitate to knit five school jumpers for a local Catholic family whose mother was expecting another baby.

  They both worked hard. Father was an engineer with the Electricity Board, Mother ran her own haberdashery shop. She often let local families have considerable amounts of credit before their bills were eventually paid – long after they were due. My father was not amused.

  Another key figure influencing my outlook, as a child and in later years, was George O’Gorman, a firm and trusted friend of my parents, and our family doctor. He often came to dinner on a Sunday. An Irishman and a Catholic, he would tease my parents about their more traditional, conservative views and habits. Dr O’Gorman had an open mind, an extroverted personality, and a wicked sense of humour. He helped contribute to the feeling I had that, all in all, my childhood was secure, ordinary and quite predictable, as if it rested on solid foundations.

  When I was twelve years old, however, that ground began to shake. Gradually, I realized that my father seemed to be at home more and more when I returned from school in the afternoon. He would tell me he was tired, but none the less he’d always help me with my homework.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I’d say, knowing full well what the answer was going to be.

  ‘No such word as can’t.’

  Soon he began to take whole days off work. It was not long before cancer was diagnosed.

  One night, I heard my mother tell Dr O’Gorman that she would not allow my father to be admitted to hospital. ‘No-one’s taking him away from home,’ she said.

  ‘Well, Margaret can’t stay here then,’ replied Dr O’Gorman.

  Within a few days, I was sent to stay with my mother’s sister. As I left, my mother said, ‘When you go to school in the morning and when you go to Aunty’s at night, you mustn’t call in here.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’ I asked. ‘I want to pop in to see you.’

  ‘You must get straight on the bus to Aunty’s, you see.’

  I didn’t see. I didn’t know what my mother was thinking of by sending me into exile at my aunt’s house on the other side of Nottingham.

  It was only much later that I realized my mother probably hoped that I would retain a memory of my father at his best. Or perhaps she simply felt unable to care for my father at home and cope with my reactions. However, this was not explained to me at the time. I was just aware of everyone telling me, ‘Your dad is getting worse.’ I didn’t need anyone to tell me that. I knew he was very ill but I felt powerless to help and marooned by my family’s good intentions.

  Then one day I came home from school and Aunty looked very serious and solemn as she put her hands on my shoulders. In a soft voice, she said, ‘You know what we said was going to happen? Well, I’m afraid it’s happened.’

  My mind struggled to find the right answer to this puzzle. ‘What has? What’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Your mother will ring you in half an hour.’

  When the telephone rang, my mother said simply, ‘Your daddy died this morning.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I replied, ‘what do we do now?’

  ‘You can come home after the funeral.’

  I wanted to go to my father’s funeral but my mother had clearly decided against it. I felt strongly that it was wrong for me not to be there, but I did not urge Mother to let me go. She was busy trying to appear as if she was in control of her emotions, though her voice betrayed the true extent of her sadness and confusion. I guessed that she wanted to shield me from the grief, but instead it only made it more difficult for me to come to terms with my father’s death.

  Nobody told me when it was the day of my father’s funeral. I must have gone to school as usual that day, because every morning my first thought when I woke up was: I have to go to school
, but perhaps it’s the day when the phone will ring and Mother will tell me she’s ready and I can go back.

  The call came two weeks later. Returning home was very strange. I went back to a mother who had lost her husband, her life partner, and along with him all their hopes and dreams. Her life changed completely; she dressed only in black and lilac and took little interest in her shop. It wasn’t just his life which had been cut short, but hers as well. I didn’t know how to help her and she didn’t know how to comfort me, perhaps because we had not shared the ordeal of my father’s last days together.

  There was one question, however, that I felt compelled to ask.

  ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘is Dad going to come home?’

  My mother looked at me in amazement.

  ‘What a strange question. What do you mean?’

  ‘I want to know if Dad’s coming home, because his hat and coat are still on the stand in the hall.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear, that’s to let people think there’s a man in the house. You know he’s gone to heaven.’

  That might have been part of the truth, but I was sure she felt, too, that as long as his hat and coat were still there, then so was he. For a while I was genuinely uncertain about whether my father had really died; after all, I had neither attended his funeral nor said goodbye.

  Like most children, grief was a mystery to me. But I had learned three important lessons about death: when parents died you never talked about them any more; you kept their hat and coat in the hall, and you sang their favourite hymn – ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’ – every Sunday at church.

  Many, many things confused me. As the day of my parents’ wedding anniversary approached, I said to one of my sisters, ‘Do I have to go and buy a card for Mum now that Dad’s died?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she snapped. ‘Of course you don’t, there’s nobody to celebrate it with.’

  ‘There’s me,’ I said.

  ‘She doesn’t want to celebrate it with you!’

  Over the next few months, the foundations continued to crumble. The sudden death of both Dr O’Gorman and my grandfather dealt two powerful blows to the body of our family.

  Those next few teenage years remind me of the English weather on an unpredictable early-summer day: a weak sun shines fitfully, but only occasionally pierces the gloom of a dark sky, heavy with threatening clouds. Two generations of my family died during this time, including my mother and grandmother. Both of these losses shook me to the core.

  I had made a child’s assumption that because my parents had been a permanent feature of my early years, they would remain as reliable, consistent figures in the future. I had never had reason to see my parents as being on loan to me for a limited but unspecified period. The foundations which I had assumed to be built of solid rock crumbled beneath me like moist sand.

  Shortly after my mother’s funeral, one of her longstanding customers innocently asked me in the street, ‘How’s your mother, Margaret?’

  ‘Oh, she’s fine,’ I replied, hurrying on my way to avoid both embarrassment to her and the possibility that she might feel sorry for me.

  I went with my sisters to help clear my family home before it was sold.

  ‘Mum said that whatever you want here is yours,’ they said. ‘One day, you will have a place of your own – you’ve got to be practical. Anything can be stored.’

  ‘I don’t want anything,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps you don’t today, but later on you will.’

  We were standing in the bedroom.

  ‘Well, I’d like Mother’s scarf,’ I said, spotting it draped over the back of a chair. ‘But that’s all I can cope with now.’

  Although I had attended my mother’s funeral, it was simply too much for me to deal with my grandmother’s death. I didn’t appreciate this until I was in one of the funeral cars on my way to the church. When the car stopped, I dashed out and began running as fast as I could.

  I ran down to the river, across the suspension bridge where I had spent so much of my childhood, and into our old street. I was drawn to places that had meant a lot to me – familiar places where we had all been happy together. There was too much grief, with too little time to absorb it all. When was it all going to stop? And why was it happening to me?

  When I left school at sixteen after passing some of my examinations, I had no definite career plans. I really needed time and space to work out some answers. So many familiar faces and landmarks had disappeared that I had difficulty contemplating the fact that I had a future. The world seemed an absurd place, one where you couldn’t count on much to last for very long. The only thing that offered me solace was classical music: it was a comforting reminder of times spent listening with my parents to concerts on the radio. There were occasions when these memories carried me through difficult times.

  My father had instilled in me an aversion to a defeatist approach to any of life’s problems. This seemed even more relevant after his death than during his life. On a material level my life was fairly comfortable. I had a variety of jobs which paid for occasional holidays abroad and a series of small cars, most as unreliable as my father’s. With the passing of time and the healing support of close family and friends, I began to enjoy life again. I felt that I had laid the more painful times in my past to rest.

  During my twenties, I felt settled and mature enough to decide upon a career in social work. There were several options to work as a trainee within the Children’s Department of Nottingham City Council and later attend university for professional training.

  The hours were long, but I felt totally committed to the people I was working with – whether they were children who’d had to leave home because they were abused, or parents who were unable to care for their children.

  The Social Services Department in Nottinghamshire was a close-knit group. We’d work until late and then find a pub still open, talking shop and complaining about the decision-makers. Social work was different back then and I remember during the coal miners’ strike we loaded up our cars and at nine o’clock at night we were still delivering bags of coal to the old and vulnerable.

  By my late twenties, I was qualified, married to a fellow social worker, Mervyn Humphreys, and had a baby daughter. As the midwife put Rachel in my arms I looked at Mervyn and said, ‘Please God, don’t let me die until she’s forty!’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t want her to be lonely,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t bear to think of her having nowhere to go at Christmas, or not receiving birthday cards from her mum and dad.’

  ‘But our children will always have somebody,’ Merv said.

  ‘It’s not that, Merv,’ I said. ‘It’s not having your mum and dad …’

  I was one of the first women to take maternity leave in the department, and returned to work with a very young baby. I was part of the new wave of women who were going to have children and continue with their careers.

  I worked full time, which sometimes included weekends on emergency duties.

  Mervyn and I devoted every spare minute to Rachel and then Ben, who was born in 1980. There was very little energy for anything else. Many people we knew were moving around the country for promotion, better jobs or more money, but Merv and I decided early on that we weren’t going to move our kids from pillar to post and risk disrupting their education. We resolved to stay put in Nottingham.

  In those far distant days, a few optimistic souls imagined that the new, all-purpose social services departments would herald a brave new world of exciting opportunities and extra resources. If some of these hopes proved to be illusions, it was certainly not due to a lack of effort on the part of my enthusiastic and dedicated colleagues.

  Working with children and families had become perhaps the most important and largest area of social work. It was also, without doubt, the saddest. By the mid-eighties, I had a heavy workload of high-risk cases – children at severe risk of injury or grave neglect if allowe
d to stay with their families.

  If I could help a family stay together, whatever it took, it was worth while; but sometimes there was little choice. There is no social worker who does not feel great sadness when children have to be moved permanently from their families. If we felt any other way, we would be less than human.

  I remember having to take a new-born baby from her mother, a woman with severe learning difficulties, who I knew could not possibly have coped. It was the second time I had taken a child from her and it affected me deeply. I was driving away with a colleague holding the baby girl on the back seat of my car and I wondered, What will she think, years from now, about the decisions being made for her? What will she want to know about her mother and father? What will I tell her, if, in the future, she seeks me out and asks me why I took her away from her mother?

  These are questions that every social worker asks themselves. This kind of intervention requires enormous compassion and skill because you are dealing with the most fundamental and important aspect of our well-being, our families.

  In 1975, a change in the legislation meant that, for the first time, adopted adults had access to their birth certificates – and, in turn, a part of their identity that had been missing. It made me consider the importance of an individual’s identity and of knowing how we define who we really are. It’s an issue that hasn’t been well researched.

  I counselled many adults who had been adopted as children and now wished to take advantage of their new rights to information by obtaining their original birth certificates. They faced many new and difficult dilemmas. The most common is feeling torn between the need to find their roots and the fear that the search will upset their adoptive parents. This conflict can create an enormous level of anxiety which can dominate every waking hour.