Wilde Women

by Louise Pentland

  ‘“Straight after they married, Mum had Robert and things went well. She was a typical 1950s housewife. She cooked and cleaned and raised Robert while Dad worked his nine to five and felt important for it. They had one holiday a year to a nice resort in the Algarve, he bought Mum the same bottle of perfume every year for her birthday, and if she wore lipstick any bolder than a frosted pink he’d tut. I’m not sure you’d have liked him”, Kath said.’

  I’m amazed. Here is Lacey, telling me things I never knew about Auntie Kath and my own dad. People I thought I knew inside out. Not to mention my own grandparents.

  ‘I was intrigued,’ Lacey says. ‘And even though a part of me was worrying about what was coming, I told her to go on. Kath told me that ten years later, her mum found out she was pregnant again, with Kath. “I was a bit of a surprise,” Kath said. “Not really in their rather staid life plan”, was how she put it. “They loved me,” Kath went on. “I was well looked after, and I think Mum enjoyed having a little girl after all those years of Dad and Robert. We didn’t have an exciting life, but it was what I knew and I was happy. Much to Dad’s pride, just like Robert, I passed my eleven-plus and was accepted into the grammar school. You might not think it now, but I was considered to be very intelligent.” I told Kath I thought very highly of her,’ Lacey says. ‘I was encouraging her to go on. Now let me see if I can remember exactly how she told me the next part.

  ‘“I wanted to earn a little bit of money to pay for things like magazines and clothes and all the bits and pieces that youngsters wanted back then, so I applied for a job at the local fish and chip shop, and got it! Dad wasn’t thrilled, because he thought it ‘wasn’t becoming for a lady to work behind a fish counter all night’, but Mum persuaded him it was good for me to have a little bit of independence. Robert had been afforded so much more because he was a boy, and it was all right to differentiate back then. He’d already finished university and had his own digs with his engineering chums and had flown the nest.”’

  Some of what Lacey is telling me matches the little Dad has told me about his childhood, but I’ve never heard it from Kath’s perspective. Lacey looks less anxious now, concentrating instead on relaying everything Kath had said.

  ‘Kath told me how she loved that job in the chippy, and how well she got on with the customers. “There was one young chap who came in a lot and took quite a shine to me. Ian. He was tall and handsome and had a job at the local garage as a car salesman. I thought he was so debonair, of course. He was twenty, five years older than me, and we started courting.

  ‘“It was all secret. I didn’t dare tell anyone because I knew Dad wouldn’t approve, and even if Mum did she wouldn’t go against Dad, so we snuck around. He’d take me out in all these cars he borrowed from the garage, he’d come into work to talk to me and we’d have a brilliant time. I was so carefree, so stupid.”’

  ‘What else did she say?’ I sense Lacey is working up to the heart of Kath’s story.

  ‘She asked me what it is that always happens when you’re naive and think you’re in love. “I got caught out, as they say. I missed one of my monthlies. The smell of the haddock turned my stomach and my skirts were too tight. I told Ian first. I thought he’d give me one of his dazzling smiles and tell me it would be all right and stick by me. I stupidly thought all men had the same morals as Dad, only maybe without his severity, and that perhaps Ian would offer to marry me, but he didn’t. He told me to get rid of it. I cried and cried, but he said he couldn’t take me on, couldn’t cope with a baby and that I should have been more careful.” Honestly, Robin, she was sobbing by this point. But luckily Lyla was still busy playing, thankfully oblivious.’

  I feel a wave of outrage for what my aunt has been through, as Lacey keeps doing her best to tell me exactly what Kath said.

  ‘Kath told me she just had to accept it. “That was how things were then. We’ve come a long way in forty years, you know. Still a way to go, but I’m not sure you young things know what a difference has already been made,” Kath told me.

  ‘I felt desperately sad,’ says Lacey. ‘But I knew I had to ask her what happened, if she’d had to have an abortion.’

  I can’t get my head around what Lacey is telling me. Kath? An abortion?

  ‘I asked Kath if they were legal by then, and she nodded. “They were, but it was still a huge taboo and I’d left it a long time. I think I was in denial. I’d tried to hide it as long as I could but though she was timid and unassuming, Mum wasn’t stupid and she figured it out. When I admitted it to her, sat on her chintz-covered sofa in the front room, she cried into her teacup. I asked if I could put a cot in my bedroom and look after the baby there and see about more shifts at the fish and chip shop, but she was adamant that Dad would never have it and that the ‘shame’ would kill him.”

  ‘I asked Kath about the father and she went quiet before carrying on. “Ian was long gone, and wouldn’t answer any of my letters. I tried phoning him a few times when Mum was out, but he told me to stop contacting him and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I had rights, or if there was any support available for girls like me, so when Mum said there was only one option, I took her word for it.

  ‘“We hid it from Dad for as long as possible, which wasn’t very hard because he wasn’t the attention-giving, doting dad you get today, and then we told him I was going to do a three-month secretarial course in Desborough. He was made up with that. A ‘fine skill’ for a lady like me, he thought. So we packed my bags and Mum took a taxi with me to the train station.” Kath paused and looked up at the sky. “She didn’t even come with me to the home.”’

  ‘The home?’ I am struggling to absorb all this, but Lacey looks lighter for sharing it with me.

  ‘The maternity home. Kath told me she stayed there for about a month before the contractions started and she gave birth to the most beautiful little baby. “She had light blonde hair that stuck up in wisps just like Willow’s, and the lightest blue eyes you’ve ever seen. She was perfection. I held her and brought her up close to me and wished I could tell her how much I loved her and have her remember it.” Kath was crying as she got to this part, Robin.’

  I notice Lacey holding Willow all the tighter as she goes on.

  ‘“I had her for six weeks,” is what she said. “Every day I held her, washed her, fed her, stroked her and nuzzled my nose into her neck. They told me not to get attached or to name her because it would only make it worse for both of us, but I couldn’t not. Nothing could have made it worse. She was my beautiful baby and they took her. They took her out of my arms and told me this was for the best. It was best that I stopped feeding her my milk and it was best that I didn’t pick her up so much and it was best that I didn’t give her her name.”’

  I can feel hot, angry tears building behind my eyes as Lacey tells me everything Kath has been through. How can the kind, funny, loving woman sleeping upstairs have once been a frightened, abandoned mother?

  ‘“She was beautiful. She was the most beautiful creature, and my heart physically hurts every day that I didn’t keep her, that I didn’t run away and hide or keep her with me.” Oh, Robin. I didn’t know what to say. I was barely able to breathe. I just kept saying I was so sorry, just so, so sorry,’ Lacey says.

  ‘“They said she wasn’t mine, and that a proper God-fearing, respectable family would take her and love her – but she was mine and I did love her. She was perfect and she was mine. I don’t even know if they got the note I snuck in with her favourite blanket, telling them how I loved my Eleanor Edith Wilde. I loved her then and I love her now. My baby. Mine.”’ Lacey is choked with sorrow as she repeats Kath’s words.

  I’m totally overwhelmed, with tears running down my cheeks. ‘Has she ever looked for her? Did you ask her that, Lace?’

  ‘She said not. “Mum always said she was better off with her new family, and it was best we all put it behind us and let the past be in the past. Dad died never knowing Eleanor had existed, and Robert�
��s never said anything, though I think he suspected. Maybe Dad did too, really. I never became a secretary when I came home. I just sat in my room crying every day until Mum said enough was enough and it was time to find a job. I’d missed my last exams, so I took up a training course in hairdressing, and from then on that was my career.

  ‘“It wasn’t a bad life. I met Derek when I was twenty-two, and he knew what had happened and he loved me, let me talk about her, but it made things all the more painful that we were never able to have our own children. When Robert and Angela had Robin, it was a little bit like my chance to have a daughter of my own. Angela was never particularly maternal and Robert didn’t have the gusto to step in – he’s so like Mum – but I loved it. Taking her out, showing her how to make little paper dresses for her dollies, baking with her, all of it. I would always think of Eleanor, where she’d be now, what she’d be doing. She’d be thirty-eight by now. She might even have her own family. I think about her every day. Every single day. And I hope she’s happy. I hope she’d understand that I didn’t want to give her up. I know it’s too late for me to tell her that, but I hope she knows.”’

  ‘Oh, Lacey. Our Kath. I can’t imagine it. And she’s kept it hidden all these years. But why has it all come out now? Why couldn’t she tell me?’

  For a few moments, Lacey and I sit and let the tears fall down our cheeks in silence. I have never felt more in shock than I do right now.

  Slowly, bit by bit, I start to process it.

  ‘Kath is a mother,’ I say to Lacey, who is holding Willow tightly, rocking her back and forth ever so gently.

  ‘Yes. It makes so much sense now. She’s always been so maternal.’

  ‘I wish I’d known,’ I say, staring at the chintzy rug laid over the bare varnished floorboards. ‘I wish she’d felt able to tell me.’

  ‘Are you cross? That I know?’ Lacey asks worriedly.

  ‘No. I don’t think so. This is too big. It’s not about me or you or how we feel – we need to help Kath. I can’t imagine how her heart must be breaking right now,’ I say, feeling such sadness.

  ‘Or how broken it already is,’ Piper says, walking back into the room, clearly having heard everything.

  ‘We’ve got to do something,’ I say indignantly. ‘She can’t live like this.’

  ‘You’re right,’ says Lacey, glad we’re on the same page.

  ‘You are right, but let’s keep this here for now, let’s not go at Kath all guns blazing. Let’s take it easy, keep things on the DL and work out what the best thing is, going forward,’ Piper says, the calm voice of reason we all need to hear right at this moment.

  ‘I’ve requested a bit of leave from work, and I’m going to come home for a month and help Lacey out, aren’t I, sis?’ Piper continues, looking at me. ‘Once I’m back, we’ll work out what we’re going to do about Kath, OK?’

  Relief washes over me harder than I thought it would. I’m glad someone is going to look after Lacey and I can relax a little bit, and I’m happy that someone other than me is going to think of a plan, because right now my mind is swirling like one of the rides at Coney Island – I can’t get off and I’m ready to throw up.

  Poor Kath, my poor, poor, lovely Kath.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  LACEY, PIPER AND WILLOW say their goodbyes and head out to the subway. It was the most surreal goodbye we’ve ever had, all still in shock from the conversation, letting it sink in and working out what we’re going to do next. I don’t think I really said much, I was in such a daze – it’s a lot to process.

  I already felt like I had a lot on my shoulders, but now I feel like someone has picked up an entire planet and placed it on them too. This is a lot. How Kath has spent every day thinking about this, I don’t know.

  This is why she’s been so teary, so involved with Willow – it’s all slotting into place.

  Just as my mind is whirring with all the little things she’s said and done over the years that now make sense, and racing with all the things that could happen in the next few years, like maybe even finding her daughter, the doorbell rings again. It’s Edward, though I’m so lost in my own thoughts I barely even meet his lovely eyes. I still feel a million miles away, caught up in a spiral of questions and concerns.

  ‘Am I glad to see you!’ he says, kissing me on the cheek and walking in as soon as I open the door.

  ‘I’ve had the most manic day. All I’ve wanted is to come here, see my beautiful girlfriend, maybe give her a bit of a smooch and relax,’ he says, swinging me round and giving me said smooch.

  ‘Edward,’ I say, pulling back, really not feeling in the spirit of things.

  ‘Sorry, sorry!’ He lets me go. ‘The store has been on fire for customers this week. People wanting bespoke makes, people requesting particular designers, people wanting advice. It’s been so intense.’ He’s clearly picking up on my wan face, and carries on. ‘On top of that, I’ve been handling a lot of UK stuff over email and trying to keep that all going, and not having a chance to see you, and squeezing in a few of the New York guys for drinks. It’s been a lot to juggle.’

  Erm, yes, I do bloody know. I don’t say anything, just blink at him wondering if he’s listened to anything I’ve said over the last few weeks about also having a lot on, or if I’ve done such a convincing job of saying ‘I’m fine’ that he really hasn’t noticed at all.

  ‘So anyway,’ he continues, ‘I could really do with going out, maybe getting a steak and just letting it all out,’ he says, holding both my hands, willing me to say yes.

  ‘Oh Edward, I’d absolutely love to go out for steak and convo, but I can’t. My head’s spinning. There’s so much on right now and I don’t have anyone to look after Lyla. I can’t,’ I say, trying to excuse myself so I can just take a minute to process the day’s revelations.

  ‘Can’t Kath watch her for a couple of hours?’ he says, sounding annoyed. Surely not.

  ‘Not really, she’s done a lot this week. I don’t want to ask her,’ I say uncomfortably. I feel so awful for not being the girlfriend he wants and needs me to be, but I can’t ask Kath for any extra favours or help right now – not when I know she’s the one that truly needs the support.

  ‘So we’ll just stay in again, shall we?’ he asks, definitely annoyed.

  In an instant, I’ve gone from overwhelmed with the Kath news, mixed with guilty for not being able to give my all to him, to enraged that he’s annoyed about this. See what I mean about the roller coaster?

  ‘Edward, don’t be like this. I’d love nothing more than to go out for food but I can’t right now, I’ve got such a lot on,’ I begin, trying to contain my frustration.

  ‘We’ve all got a lot on, Robin! You’re not the only person leading a busy life, or the only person with responsibilities to manage,’ he says.

  I can’t believe he’s having a strop about this.

  ‘Yes, I know I’m not, but I—’

  ‘But you what? But you have a child, so you’re more important?’ he says, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. How can he use that against me?

  ‘How dare you!’ I’m aghast.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, I just found out the Manhattan store is struggling with staffing, and—’

  ‘Well, I just found out Kath had a daughter and had to give her up for adoption!’ I shout, completely at the end of my tether. I know instantly that I shouldn’t have just dropped that bombshell on him. It’s a lot for anyone to take in.

  He stands stock-still. We haven’t moved from the front door where I greeted him five minutes ago, and all the anger and frustration in his face evaporates. His kind, caring demeanour returns and he takes both of my hands gently. Oh, I’ve needed this. Just for a moment, I need to be looked after.

  ‘I’m so glad she finally told you,’ he says quietly, looking into my eyes.

  Utter. Boiling. Rage.

  ‘How do you know?’ I say with such venom in my voice I surprise even myself. Edward takes a minute step bac
k.

  ‘I haven’t known long. She told me a few days ago. It was that first night. You’d gone out with Natalie, Martin and Lyla for dinner, I’d grabbed a cab over to surprise you and just found Kath in a terrible, terrible state. I was so worried something horrific had happened, an intruder or something, so I told her I wouldn’t leave until she told me what was wrong. She did, and then asked me to go home. I didn’t know what to do, it was a lot of information, so I thought it was best I just remove myself from the situation, respect her wishes and go back to mine. I told her to tell you …’ he trails off.

  ‘The whole trip you’ve known this huge family secret and haven’t thought to tell me?’ I say, prickling with irritation.

  ‘What? “Thought to tell you”? I’ve wanted to tell you every bloody day, Robin!’ he says, heating up himself now.

  ‘So you just didn’t have the guts to tell me then?’ I almost shout, exasperated.

  ‘Are you joking? Not have the guts? When I’ve had the guts to take on this relationship in the first place, potentially be a father, move across the world, step into a family, be understanding of your time constraints? There’s hardly been a single fucking moment to even say hello to you, let alone tell you your auntie had a secret fucking baby!’ he roars.

  Wow. Now I’m stunned. I can’t believe this is our first proper row. I don’t want to believe any of what he’s saying, but suddenly my confident facade is crumbling and I want to curl up into the tiniest ball possible and cry until I can go home to my house, my sofa and my friends.

  ‘This is too much. I think you should go,’ I whisper, looking at the floor, the wind completely knocked out of me.