by Julie Shaw
Keith’s expression was becoming one of mounting distress. ‘Tell me,’ she whispered. ‘However bad it is, tell me!’
‘Oh, love,’ he said, ‘you don’t really want to know –’
‘Yes, I bloody do!’
He sighed and took hold of Shirley’s hand. ‘They wouldn’t let me see him. I did ask, but they wouldn’t. Said it would be too upsetting for me …’
Shirley felt as if her heart would break into a million pieces. ‘Why? What had happened to him? What was wrong with him, Keith?’
‘It was his head, they said, mostly. He had a big head,’ he added quietly. ‘Water on the brain. Swollen up. That’s what they told me. And that –’ he squeezed her free hand tightly, refusing to let her wriggle it away. ‘That he didn’t have proper arms or feet, Shirl. You wouldn’t want to see him, that’s what they said – you know, under the circumstances. Love, you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. Like they said, I think it’s for the best.’
Shirley recoiled at the image that now swam before her. She pulled her knees up and hugged them to her chest, newly anguished by the missing bulk of her distended pregnant belly – by the lack of the child she had carried inside her all these long months. But what had she given birth to? Why had it happened? What had she done to deserve such a tragedy? She rocked back and forth, crying freely, trying to pin it down to something. Was it because she’d insisted on climbing up to put those trimmings up? Her mam had told her not to, hadn’t she? Gone on and on about how she should rest? Was it the sickness? The chronic nausea that she’d never really managed to get over? How could it be the pills? They’d been all that had kept her going. How could it possibly be them? They were proper prescription medicine. They’d have been tested, surely? Someone would have known if they were dangerous. No, it couldn’t have been them, could it? How could they have let something like that happen? It seemed too shocking, too unthinkable for words.
Another nurse joined them in the room then. A sister. She was carrying a kidney bowl and some paperwork and smiled sympathetically at Shirley as she placed the bowl on the locker beside the bed. It contained a square of what looked like gauze and a syringe. Were they going to put her to sleep again?
Apparently not. Not yet, at least. The nurse smiled again, if weakly. Shirley didn’t smile back at her. She didn’t want sympathetic smiles. She wanted her baby in her arms, whole and perfect. Not this emptiness. This horror. This inexplicable, terrible news. It was like a throbbing ache in a place she couldn’t get at. ‘I know you’ve had a shock, love,’ the nurse said as she perched on the side of Shirley’s bed without asking permission. ‘But we need to ask something of you.’ She looked down at the papers in her hand, then glanced across at Keith. ‘We need your permission to let us perform a post-mortem on the baby. It’s because of the thalidomide. The medicine you took for your morning sickness. There’s been a few births like this up and down the country, you see, and we need to do the post-mortem to help us be sure of the cause.’
Shirley looked at Keith in shock. She knew what a post-mortem was. It meant they wanted to further mutilate her poor little boy. ‘No! Keith, tell her no! They’re not chopping him up as well!’
The nurse put a gentle hand on Shirley’s raised knee. ‘We really need to do it, love. I know it’s incredibly painful for you to think about, but it’s so important that we do it. You do see that, don’t you? It’s vital. It will potentially help other women in your situation,’ she explained. Then she paused. ‘And it might help save their babies.’
Shirley stared at her, even more stunned. Did the nurse think she even cared? Why should her precious child – her dead child – be chopped up? It wasn’t fair! But even as her breath caught in her throat, the pain searing through her anew, she watched Keith calmly take the piece of paper and pen that were being offered to him and sign the form in his elegant handwriting. How could he? Frig the other mothers and frig their babies too. What about hers? It wasn’t fair. It couldn’t be. They might be fine, but what about her? She wanted her baby. She wanted him so badly. Wanted to take him home, to where Christmas was ready and waiting for him. To take him home and put him to bed in the crib her mam and dad had bought them. The crib with the lovely lemon blankets with a picture of a rocking horse on them. Dress him in the clothes her Granny Wiggins had already made for him. Rock him in her arms to send him to sleep. She had to have him. She didn’t think she could bear to go home without him. She looked desperately towards the kidney bowl with the syringe in it. ‘Oh, put me to sleep. Just put me to sleep. I don’t care what you do!’ She sobbed. She turned on Keith then. ‘And you can bugger off as well. Go to the pub with your brothers like you usually do! Go on, get out of here and leave me alone!’
She turned her back on the pair of them as the nurse prepared her arm for the injection, and she was relieved to feel the sting of the needle piercing her skin. It would take her away, and escape was the thing she craved most now. To be taken from this hell and delivered somewhere else. To have the dreadful pictures in her head plunged into darkness. She was only vaguely aware of Keith whispering that he was leaving as she drifted off into oblivion. She didn’t care.
She didn’t care if she never woke up again.
Chapter 19
The Christmas of 1962 was the worst time Shirley had ever experienced in her young life. She couldn’t think of a single time when she’d felt so wretched. Keith’s birthday on 22 December went unmarked; it was all she could do to get out of bed and face the day. It was bad enough that her body, which was still healing after going through so much, was now so cruelly primed for feeding a newborn. She’d been given some pills to help settle her hormones, but her new curvaceous shape was almost too much to bear, so she avoided looking in mirrors. She wanted nothing more than to shrivel up and disappear. And when she did find the energy to venture out of the house, as she was constantly urged to by her mam, women with babies seemed to be everywhere, all going about their own business, proudly pushing their pink-faced sons and daughters in their lovely prams.
Mary was doing her best to console her only daughter – Shirley knew that. But in truth, because she was so grief-stricken herself, for the first couple of numb weeks she didn’t really manage to help Shirley much at all, as she kept breaking down in tears herself.
Platitudes, too, came relentlessly, from every corner, so much so that they began to feel like riders on a carousel, hopping on then going round and round and round in Shirley’s head: you can try again, you’re both only young, the Lord acts in mysterious ways and, worst of all, it was a blessing in disguise.
A blessing in disguise? A blessing for who exactly? Certainly not for Shirley. And Keith wasn’t much help, either. She just couldn’t seem to connect with him about it at all. He just couldn’t or didn’t want to talk about it. It was over and done with, his weary expression seemed to say, and that was that. Whenever Shirley cried and hugged the little brown teddy bear they’d bought for the baby, Keith simply made an excuse to get out of the house. She wouldn’t see him then until the early hours of the next morning, when he’d stagger back home, pissed, no use to anyone. And that was what decided it for Shirley, really. Sympathy was something she shouldn’t expect, and why look for it anyway? When she got it, she didn’t even know what to do with it. Nothing anyone said really spoke to her or made it better, so perhaps the best thing she could do was to simply get on with her life, and try to bury the experience somewhere in a dark recess in her mind.
It was hard to let go, though, with the fact of it ever present – and not just as a part of her physically, either. A letter came through the post on 23 December – the day after Keith’s birthday had passed without comment, and two days before the day she was dreading even more. The day of their first Christmas together as a proper family. It was a letter from St Luke’s Hospital, addressed to Keith, telling him he had to go back there and pay the ten pounds they owed them for ‘disposing’ of their first born. Shirley stared at the letter with wide, uncrying
eyes. That was how bad it was; she couldn’t even weep over it. Instead she reached for her purse and simply passed him the money. She knew in that moment she had lost more than her baby; she had lost a part of herself that day, too – something she knew she’d never be able to get back.
‘Aren’t you hungry at all, Shirley?’ her mother asked, smiling weakly across the table at her as they sat down to their dinner on Christmas Day. They had decided on that, at least, that to stay at home would be torture. So instead they’d walked the small distance from their house to Mary and Raymond’s, where they could at least sit and be tortured with company. At least, Shirley could. Was Keith suffering anything like as much as she was? She tried to force a smile on her face.
‘There’s just so much on my plate, Mam,’ she answered. ‘It’s all lovely, honest. I might even save half of mine for supper.’
She turned to Keith, hoping he’d chip in and divert her mum’s anxious scrutiny. ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’
In answer, Keith nodded and picked up the glass of bitter Raymond had just poured from the jug. ‘I tell you what, Mary, love, this is the best Christmas dinner I’ve ever eaten. Top notch.’
Mary’s pride was visible. As was her relief. She smiled at her son-in-law. ‘Aww, I’m so glad you’re enjoying it, love. Our Shirley’s a good cook as well, though,’ she added hastily. ‘I’m sure next year, when it’s her turn, it’ll be every bit as nice.’
Shirley tried to quash the impulse to just get up and leave them to it. It was all just so painful and it was exhausting her now. It was like having perpetual toothache.
But at least her mam had spirited away the pile of presents that had sat under the tree. She’d been so excited when Mary had shown her all the little rattles and bits and bats she’d bought earlier in the year for the baby, even if she’d scolded her at the time for going overboard and spending so much.
‘Oh, don’t be daft, love,’ Mary had laughed, as she’d added another little something to the growing pile of Christmas gifts. ‘Your dad works hard for the money, and I worked even harder to get it all off him. And what better have I to do than spend it all on my first grandchild?’
So Shirley had allowed it and indulged her mam whenever something new had appeared, understanding that, for her mam, this was a massive event as well, which would bring as much happiness to them as it would to her and Keith.
The pile was no more now, however, and the area around the tree looked horribly denuded. The brightly wrapped pile had been just a modest collection of small, adult-shaped presents: some socks and aftershave for Keith and perfume and new underwear for herself. She forced down the lump in her throat as she glanced around the table, if only to make room for a couple more mouthfuls to put her mam’s mind at rest and because she knew she must make an effort not to spoil the day for everyone else. She felt it keenly, too – because they seemed to be keen to enjoy it. Could that be true? It was almost as if they’d forgotten.
When the new year blew in and Shirley could at last put Christmas to bed, she felt that sense of everyone else forgetting even more keenly. No, no one had yet said least said soonest mended, not that she’d heard, anyway, but she knew that was what was required of her. She was almost grateful, then, to see her GP one morning in mid-January for her check-up; at least here was somewhere she could talk about the baby she’d never seen, but who had lived and squirmed and kicked inside her, and who was still constantly at the forefront of her mind.
Shirley had been with Doctor Hardaker since she’d been a small child, and he was a bit like a favourite uncle, really. He’d had her sit for a minute while he glanced through her notes, and now he sighed as he removed his glasses and placed the file back on his big oak desk. ‘Shirley, I’m so sorry about what happened, love,’ he said, reaching to pat her hand almost automatically. ‘The truth is that perhaps we didn’t know all we should about those anti-sickness tablets, and some are saying that women shouldn’t be taking them anymore.’ He shifted the papers a little, and clasped his hands together on top of them. ‘You know what my advice would be? Here and now? To try again, love. To have another baby, a perfect baby this time. I think the sooner you do, the sooner you’ll forget all about this. Well, if not forget,’ he added hastily, ‘at least begin to put it all behind you. So,’ he finished, ‘let’s have a look at you, shall we?’
Shirley stared hard at her doctor as she lay on his couch for her examination, feeling suddenly clear-sighted about it all. What was he sorry for? It wasn’t his fault, after all. It was just one of those things, everybody had said so. Besides, Shirley thought, if she was ever to get back to any kind of normality, then she needed to put all that behind her.
Even so, she hadn’t even thought about trying again just yet. In fact, the opposite was true. She was still grieving for the baby she’d carried but never held, not thinking about making a replacement. Wasn’t it much, much too soon?
Not that any of that sexy stuff held any interest for her right now, anyway – it was the very last thing on her mind. She’d had lots of stitches from where the forceps had torn her, and her body was still healing – just thinking about them still made her wince. The more she thought about it now, though, the more it suddenly made sense to try again. Perhaps another baby would help fill the hole in her heart. Perhaps another baby would make everything better, and mean that people wouldn’t have to tip-toe around her any more. It might mean she could get back to normal and feel whole again.
‘Thank you, doctor,’ she said when he’d finished feeling her tummy, ‘I think that’s exactly what I’ll do.’
‘Good lass,’ the doctor said, smiling. ‘Let’s get a smile back on that pretty face.’
Keith was both surprised and very grateful. Not least because he was suddenly back to being flavour of the month and there was no need to make a dent in their precious finances or borrow money off Granny Wiggins for contraceptives. Granny Wiggins had been firm on that point. She’d even taken Shirley aside to discuss ‘women’s issues’ with her, getting her to promise she’d not even think of trying for another child until she was completely fit and well again – both in her body and in her mind. ‘And don’t you worry about paying for the contraceptive pill,’ she’d told Shirley. ‘I’ll see to all that for you.’
Shirley had been grateful, even if she hadn’t planned on taking her granny up on it, but now the visit to the doctor’s had changed everything. The answer to her pain was clearly to try as soon as possible. So, buoyed by his blessing, she went straight home to Keith and announced they’d start trying right away.
It didn’t take long for her to fall pregnant. Within three weeks, prompted by a familiar nausea, she went back to the doctor’s to have a blood test, and it confirmed it – there was indeed a second baby on the way.
Shirley didn’t allow herself to be consumed by this pregnancy, however. She didn’t dare. She’d entered a new world now, a world in which bad things could happen, and she didn’t want to tempt fate by letting her mind wander – if she did, she’d find herself thinking ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, when there was a very big ‘if’ river to cross. Though she didn’t go back to work – if she was going to be sick all the time, it wouldn’t be possible anyway, and again, supported by her mam, she remained at home. And as she hadn’t been back to work yet, she decided that it was safer to stay as she was. It meant that Keith had to work extra hard and take up a few decorating jobs at weekends, but she figured it would be worth it and she didn’t want to take any chances. Fate was now her enemy, and she was determined to head it off. She asked her mam to promise that she wouldn’t start going out and buying things, and to store everything she already had down at her house.
‘Shirley, it’s your second chance,’ Mary told her, ‘and you need to stop worrying about it. Lightning doesn’t strike twice, and you need to stop worrying. I’ll keep all the things if you want me to, course I will, love. But everything will be fine this time. You’ll see.’
‘Yes, Mam, I do,
’ Shirley said, resolute that she must do nothing to jinx this pregnancy. ‘Annie told me we should never have bought the pram in the first place. She said it’s bad luck to bring a pram home before the baby, so I want to do it right this time.’
‘That Annie’s too superstitious for her own good,’ Mary had huffed. But it made no difference to Shirley. Everything she could do, she would do. That was the only way to quash the nagging sense that refused to leave her, that it might have been something she’d done or not done that had made her baby son die as soon as he’d been born.
Shirley didn’t know what to do about Keith, though. She’d thought he’d be excited about the new baby she was expecting, but it seemed as if the opposite was true. And it hurt her. Didn’t he care? He didn’t act like he did. In fact, he seemed to want to go out more than ever. Heading off to the pub with either his brothers or his friends, and, when he was home, refusing to even acknowledge Shirley was pregnant. Did he wish she wasn’t? Was that it? It certainly seemed so.
‘You can’t let him get away with it,’ Mary warned Shirley one morning, after Keith had been out yet again with his brothers. And while he was at home sleeping off yet another hangover (when he was supposed to be at work), she’d gone down to her mam’s for some company. ‘You need to put your foot down, love. Before it’s too late.’
‘I can’t, Mam,’ Shirley said. ‘He just doesn’t listen. It’s okay if I never mention being pregnant, but the minute I say anything about it, that’s it – he’s off down to the bookies or up to the pub. I’m getting sick of it, I really am.’
‘You listen to me, Shirley,’ Mary said. ‘All men are the same. If you let them get away with murder, then they will. It’s up to us women to change things. Always was. Why should the men do what they like? It’s all wrong. No, I’m telling you, Shirley, the next time he gets ready for the pub, you get yourself dolled up and you bloody well go with him. Oh, they don’t mind putting you in the club, but trust me, love – when they’ve given you a belly full of arms and legs, they’d sooner be eyeing up some slim slut down the pub and leave you tied to the kitchen sink. Don’t fall for it, I’m telling you.’