Sing As We Go

by Margaret Dickinson

  On the morning of the funeral, Kathy sat by the window looking down the road towards the church. She had begged and pleaded to be allowed to attend her friend’s funeral but Matron was adamant in her refusal. ‘You cannot appear in public in your condition,’ she was told harshly, making her feel even more ashamed.

  Now Kathy had no one left to whisper with. No new girls had come into the home since she had arrived, and with all those that had gone recently, there were only a handful left. She tried to make friends with one or two but they were withdrawn and uncommunicative, lost in their own private world of sadness and shame.

  Once more, Kathy felt completely alone.

  Kathy felt the first pangs of labour one cold, blustery November morning. She was put in the labour room and left.

  ‘I’ll be back soon. You’ve a long way to go yet.’

  There was no one to sit with her, no one to comfort her. When the pains grew stronger and closer together and Kathy cried out, the nurse put her head round the door and said, ‘You can stop making all that noise. It’ll get worse yet.’ And she disappeared.

  Kathy sobbed and cried out again, but no one came. There was no one who cared. Anger flooded through her, and the next time the pain came in a huge, crescendo, she bit hard down and refused to cry out. Over the next twenty minutes she made no sound, and her silence brought the nurse in faster than had her cries.

  The birth was long and exhausting. As the pain became unbearable and Kathy could no longer quell her cries, she was aware that Matron had entered the room.

  With experienced, but ungentle, hands the two women positioned her to give birth and then barked orders at her. ‘Push down hard. Now pant – now push . . .’ until with one valiant effort that took the last ounce of her strength, Kathy felt a strange emptying feeling and heard a baby’s cry.

  ‘Oh – oh. What is it?’

  No one answered. She tried to raise herself up to see, but weariness overwhelmed her and she fell back. She was aware of movement in the room and the cries of her child grew fainter.

  ‘Please . . .’ she begged, but then she remembered no more.

  When she came round, she was back in her own bed in the ward. She felt battered and bruised. She tried to sit up, but pain seared through her and she gave a cry.

  One of the young girls, Peggy, who had come in the week before, came to her bedside.

  ‘Can I get you anything? Would you like a drink of water?’

  ‘Please,’ Kathy croaked through parched lips.

  Peggy raised her up and held a glass to her parched lips. Kathy drank gratefully.

  As she lay back again, she asked, ‘My baby? Where’s my baby?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘They’ve taken him away.’

  ‘A boy? It was a boy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where’ve they taken him?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘He’ll have gone to his new parents, I suppose.’

  ‘What? Already? They can’t do that. I haven’t even seen him. I haven’t given my permission. I haven’t even – even held him.’ Tears coursed down her face. ‘They should have let me hold him. I should have him with me for a few weeks. Why – why have they taken him?’

  Peggy leant closer. ‘I heard Matron talking to one of the nurses, telling her not to let you have him. “She’s trouble, that one,” she said. “Doctor said she wants to keep him, but he’s got an ideal couple waiting. Keep her sedated for two days. When she comes round, he’ll be gone. And she won’t be able to find out where.” That’s what she said.’

  ‘Have I been asleep for two days?’

  Peggy nodded. ‘They kept rousing you and giving you more pills or they stuck a needle in you.’

  ‘But how can they do that? I thought the rules were that mothers nursed the babies for five or six weeks.’ Kathy passed her hand over her clammy forehead. She was still feeling dizzy and sick. It must be all the sedatives they’d given her.

  ‘What rules?’ Peggy laughed wryly. ‘They make their own rules here, believe me. Matron – and the doctor. They can do whatever they like because they own this place between them. Didn’t you know? They’re brother and sister.’

  No, she hadn’t known. And now she was beginning to doubt the integrity of this place. But she was too weak to do anything about it. Too exhausted even to get out of bed. Her strength had drained from her and even her spirit was defeated and broken.

  Kathy turned her face to the wall and wept bitter, scalding tears.

  *

  When Kathy was strong enough, she dressed and walked down to the matron’s office.

  She faced the woman across the desk. ‘I didn’t know that those papers you had me sign when I came in here were adoption papers. You never told me what they were.’

  The matron smiled. ‘Now, sit down, my dear. You’ve been through a very difficult birth and you’re not feeling strong yet. We can let you stay another week but then you’ll have to leave.’

  ‘But my baby,’ Kathy felt tears of weakness flow down her face. ‘What have you done with my baby?’

  ‘He’s gone to a loving couple. He will have a wonderful home, my dear. Everything that you could never give him. Isn’t that the very best thing for him?’

  ‘Where’s he gone? Who’s taken him?’

  ‘I can’t possibly tell you that. It wouldn’t do.’

  ‘But what are they like, these people? Surely you can tell me something?’

  ‘It’s our rules that neither side know the names or anything about each other. Secrecy is best for all concerned. All we can do is assure you that the adoptive parents are respectable people and suitable to bring up your child as if he was their own. Now, dry your tears and concentrate on getting yourself fit and well. Then you can leave and get on with your life. But if you’ll take my advice, you won’t be so foolish enough to find yourself in here again.’

  Kathy rose and left the room without another word. As she reached for the door handle, she caught sight of three wooden filing cabinets, each with four drawers, placed against the wall just inside the door of the matron’s office. On each drawer there were letters A–B, C–D and so on through the alphabet. Kathy didn’t pause in her movement towards the door and out of the room, but as she left, her heart was beating a little faster.

  In those drawers were the details of the people who had taken her baby. She was sure of it.

  Kathy told no one of her plan. If only Lizzie were still here, or even Pamela, she might have confided in one of them, but she didn’t feel as if she knew the girls that were left well enough to trust them. They all seemed downtrodden, with no spirit left in them. She waited impatiently for another two nights, until she felt stronger. Luckily, she was now in a room on her own, so when she thought the household would be asleep, she crept out of her room and down the stairs, stopping in alarm every time a tread creaked. It sounded so loud in the silence of the night.

  She reached the door to the matron’s office and tried the door handle. To her relief, it wasn’t locked. Quietly, she slipped into the darkened room. She didn’t want to turn on a light, so she opened the curtains to let the bright moonlight shine in. Then she went to the cabinets. They were locked. She bit her lip and looked about her. Then she tiptoed to the desk and quietly opened the middle drawer. A bunch of various-sized keys lay there. She lifted it up, wincing as the keys jangled together. She paused and listened, holding her breath, but there was no sound of anyone coming to investigate.

  She tried various keys in the topmost drawer, A–B. She was beginning to lose hope and her heart was beating faster, fearing that at any moment she would be discovered. But then, she argued, what more could they do to her? They had already robbed her of her baby. She worked on, trying every key in the bunch. The last key but one fitted and turned the lock. She pulled open the drawer, wincing as it squeaked loudly.

  The files were in alphabetical order and she pulled out the one marked B. She turned to the back of the file, knowing ‘Burton’ would be one o
f the last. And there were the notes in the matron’s own handwriting made on the day Kathy had first visited the place. If only she had turned tail and run then. She scanned through the pages until she came to the place where she had signed. Reading now, for the first time, she saw that she had indeed signed a paragraph that gave permission for her baby to be adopted. Kathy groaned and then read on. As she did so, her pulse quickened with excitement. The names of the couple who had adopted her baby boy were Mr and Mrs Henry Wainwright and the address was right here, in Saltershaven.

  Carefully, Kathy replaced the file, closed the drawer and locked it, returned the keys to the drawer in the desk and then closed the curtains. She tiptoed from the room and quietly shut the door of the matron’s room. She had no need to write down the name and address. It was seared in her mind.

  She gained her room without discovery and, once back in bed, began to breathe more easily. She couldn’t believe that she had not been caught, that it had been so easy. If the matron had locked the office, or taken the keys to the filing cabinet with her at night, there would have been nothing she could have done. She wondered if other mothers ever did what she’d done or if they, unlike her, were relieved to part with their child.

  ‘But not this mother,’ Kathy whispered into the night. ‘Not this one. I’ll find my baby and I’ll snatch him back if I have to.’

  By the end of two weeks since the birth of her child, though she wasn’t really fully recovered, Matron deemed her fit enough to leave Willow House.

  Kathy had the feeling that the woman wanted to be rid of her, so she packed her suitcase and left without a backward glance, glad to be free of the place. She walked back to where she had rented a bed-sitting room, on the top floor of a row of three-storey, terraced town houses.

  ‘Oh, it’s you. Been away, ’ave ya?’ The woman who owned the house and lived on the ground floor greeted her.

  ‘Yes, but I’m back now. Any chance of a room again?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact your old room’s just come vacant again. Young feller who worked at the bank moved out. Bin called up, ’ee ’as.’

  ‘May I take it then? Straight away?’

  ‘What, now?’ Mrs Benson looked her up and down.

  ‘Yes, I – I’ve just arrived back and I’ve nowhere else to stay.’

  ‘You look a bit peaky. You look thinner. Not sickening for summat, a’ ya? Don’t want no illness in the place.’

  ‘No – no, I’m fine.’

  Mrs Benson pulled open the door with a sniff. ‘Ya’d better come in then. Same terms as afore. No children, no pets an’ no followers.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Kathy said. She still had some thinking to do about how she could find her child and what she would do when she did. Obviously, where they would live together would be something else she would have to think about. And what they would live on was another worry. Her money was fast running out and she was too proud to ask Jemima for more.

  She settled quickly back into her old room and in some ways it was as if she’d never been away from it. Sleep didn’t come easily as she lay awake staring into the darkness and laying her plans.

  The following morning, Kathy asked Mrs Benson if she knew the road where the Wainwrights lived, but she didn’t mention their name.

  ‘Oh aye, it’s near the golf course on the way to the Point. Right on the seafront. Them’s posh houses up there. Why a’ ya asking? Hoping to get a job there, a’ ya?’

  Kathy stared at her, her mind working quickly. That hadn’t occurred to her.

  ‘I – er – saw an advert for a housekeeper,’ she lied. ‘I thought I might go and have a look.’

  ‘If I’d known you were planning on leaving so soon, I wouldn’t have let you have ya room back.’ She sniffed. ‘Messing me about. Them’s usually live-in jobs.’

  ‘I’m not messing you about, Mrs Benson. I’ll be here at least the month I’ve paid you for.’

  ‘Aye, well, mind you are. All this coming and going and changing ya mind. I can’t be doin’ with it.’

  Kathy had walked at least a mile along the road Mrs Benson had indicated she should take. She stopped to rest on a low wall in front of one of the houses. Perhaps she’d been foolish to try to walk so far, so soon. But she was anxious to see where her baby son was.

  A delivery boy, with a huge basket on the front of his bicycle, came riding past, whistling loudly.

  ‘Excuse me . . . ?’ Kathy put out her hand to attract his attention.

  ‘Yes, miss,’ he grinned as he applied his brakes and the bicycle slithered to a halt. ‘Can I ’elp ya?’

  Kathy explained and the boy said, ‘A bit further along, you’ll see the golf course, turn left up the road leading towards the sea just before it. Then at the end of the road turn right and that’s the road you want. Looking for anyone in particular?’

  ‘The Wainwrights.’

  ‘Oh aye, that’s the big house right at the end. Big white one.’

  Thanking him, Kathy walked on again wrapping her coat tightly around her as the cool breeze whipped in off the beach. At last she stood before the huge wrought-iron gates, peering through them at the elegant house at the end of the steep driveway. It was a magnificent house, painted white with gleaming windows overlooking the sandhills and the beach, right to the sea.

  As Kathy stood there uncertainly, she saw a woman emerge from a side door, turn and pull a perambulator into view. Kathy’s heart skipped a beat. Her son was in that pram. Her little boy. The woman, whom Kathy presumed to be Mrs Wainwright, pushed the pram down the drive towards the gate. She was smiling and talking all the while to the child in the pram. Kathy shrank back and began to walk away. Her heart was thumping in her chest. She had to see the baby, but she knew she must seem like a passer-by, merely making a polite enquiry. She mustn’t appear too interested. She mustn’t alarm the woman. She strolled along as if out taking a walk, but in truth was waiting for Mrs Wainwright to catch up with her. As she heard the wheels of the pram behind her, Kathy stepped off the pavement and stopped, turning to look back as if to let the woman and her baby pass by. She smiled and nodded casually, but Kathy was actually taking in every detail of her appearance. She was a little older than Kathy would have imagined, but dressed in a smart, well-cut navy blue coat. Her smooth complexion was expertly made up and her black hair peeped out from beneath a small hat that matched her coat.

  ‘Hello,’ Kathy said in a friendly manner. The woman’s smile widened and she stopped.

  ‘May – may I see your baby?’

  ‘Of course. I’m so proud of him. He’s beautiful and so good. He’s only two weeks old and this is his first time out. You have to be so careful with November weather, don’t you?’

  Mrs Wainwright leaned forward and pushed back the hood and Kathy looked down on her son for the first time. He was asleep, but she could see his smooth skin, the silky black hair and his round little face. Tears welled in her eyes as she searched the tiny face for any hint of likeness to herself or to Tony.

  ‘He’s lovely. Perfectly lovely,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

  ‘Oh, he is. We’re so lucky.’

  Kathy straightened up and turned to face the woman. ‘You look very well. Should you be out walking so soon after the birth?’

  The woman smiled a little sadly. ‘We’ve adopted him. My husband and I couldn’t have children of our own. We’ve had our names down with various adoption societies for ages and then last week, out of the blue, we got word from Willow House that there was a baby suitable for us. And he is, Oh, he is. He could be our very own. We shall spoil him, I know, but he will have everything that we can give him. And Oh, how he will be loved.’ She shook her head in wonderment, as if she still could not believe their luck. ‘We feel very blessed.’ She looked straight at Kathy with clear, earnest blue eyes. ‘To have been given such a gift and entrusted with his care. He will want for nothing.’

  ‘I – I can – can see that,’ Kathy whispered. ‘May
I ask what – what his name is?’

  ‘James,’ the woman said. ‘After my husband’s father. And I shall insist on him always being called James, not Jim or Jimmy.’

  Kathy nodded unable to speak. How ironic, she thought, that Tony’s child should be given a family name. She wondered what Beatrice Kendall would say if she knew that she had a grandson named James. And what, indeed, would James Hammond think if he knew?

  Mrs Wainwright was speaking again and moving on. ‘I must go. I’m just going to the end of the road and then back home again. It’s far enough for his first outing.’

  As they walked along, Mrs Wainwright chattered. ‘Do you live nearby?’

  ‘No – I – er – I’ve only just arrived. I’ve found lodgings and tomorrow I’ll look for work.’ Her answers came automatically, she was hardly thinking clearly. Her thoughts were in turmoil. She couldn’t do it. Her plans lay in tatters. She couldn’t snatch her baby away from this happy, loving woman who would give little James everything. What could she, an unmarried girl, with no proper home, no job, scarcely any money left, give him in comparison? She faced the awful, heart-wrenching truth. The answer was ‘nothing’. She could give her son nothing, except love. But love alone could not feed him, clothe him and keep him warm.

  They reached the end of the road and Mrs Wainwright turned the pram around. ‘There, my little precious, time to go home.’

  The baby whimpered and she leant forward, pulling down the coverlet. ‘Are you hungry, my little one? Soon be home.’

  Kathy felt a tingling in her breasts as if, hearing her baby’s cry, her body responded naturally. Kathy tore her gaze away from the baby to meet the woman’s eyes.

  ‘I must go,’ Mrs Wainwright said pleasantly. ‘I think he wants feeding. Goodbye. It’s nice to have met you. I hope you find a job.’

  Kathy nodded, unable to speak as Mrs Wainwright walked away, every step taking Kathy’s son further and further away from her. She stood watching them walk the length of the road, saw the gate open and them disappear through it. Not until then did Kathy turn away and begin her long, lonely walk home.