by Emily Gunnis
‘Thank you, Hannah.’ The vicar returned to his perch as the woman walked back to her seat and an approving smile from her husband. ‘Father Benjamin would have been very proud. And so to one of his favourite pieces of music, to be sung by Sister Clara Gale.’
The congregation looked up to the choir stalls as a nun in a blue-and-white habit began to sing ‘Ave Maria’. Silence fell and nobody appeared to move or breathe, utterly spellbound by the angelic voice. Goose bumps prickled Sam’s arms as she listened, so transfixed and overcome that when she suddenly felt a presence next to her and turned her head to see the old lady standing in the aisle beside her, she couldn’t help gasping.
The woman was bent over her frame, but in her left hand she was clutching what Sam could now see was a photograph, her eyes fixed on the coffin in front of her. No one else had noticed her yet, their attention utterly absorbed by Sister Clara’s voice. She had almost reached her destination before anyone even looked up. Tap, tap, went her frame over the grey stone floor of the church.
Suddenly everyone turned to stare as she slowly reached out and laid the picture on top of the coffin. As the music ended, she bowed her head, blessed herself in silence, and spoke.
‘May God forgive the unforgivable sins of this man, and save the souls of all those whose lives he destroyed. Amen.’ Despite her bent posture, her voice was strong.
As she straightened up, she stared up at the silenced vicar. Then, before anyone could react, she turned and slowly made her way back along the aisle. No one moved or made a sound as she reached the entrance and moved her frame across the threshold and out of the door.
The vicar seemed momentarily paralysed. Eventually he walked back to the lectern. ‘Please, don’t be upset by what you just witnessed. A parish priests’ life is sometimes one without thanks or gratitude. Those whom we try to help cannot always be helped. Let us now pray for all those helpless souls. Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven . . .’
As everyone joined in the prayer, one of the younger nuns darted forward and swept the picture to the floor. Sam was on her feet before she knew it to pick it up. When she glanced up at the congregation, she met the red-rimmed eyes of Gemma the carer, who clutched at a tissue and dabbed her nose.
Anxious to catch the old lady before she disappeared, she sidled to the entrance as fast as she could, while the others returned their attention to the vicar. As she burst from the dark church, the sunlight made it impossible to see for a second. She looked around desperately and eventually saw the lady disappearing into her minicab, which drove off down the hill. She called out after her, running down the steep road in the hope she would see her waving and stop – but she was gone. As she slowed to a walk, she realised her phone was vibrating in her bag.
‘Sam, where the hell are you?’ asked Murray as soon as she answered.
‘I’ve just finished interviewing Clara Bancroft and I’m on my way back,’ Sam hastily replied, as a van driver honked his horn at her.
‘Don’t lie to me. The photographer called and said you’d left nearly an hour ago,’ Murray barked. Sam could visualise the veins in his neck bulging, as they always did when he was in a rage.
‘I’m just on my way back now, Murray. I had some problems with my car.’
‘Yeah, well, your grandmother called the office. She’s been trying to get hold of you – your kid’s sick. I want your copy in by two. After that, you and me need to have a talk.’ The line went dead.
Feeling utterly overwhelmed, Sam sank onto a bench and tried to calm herself down.
The old woman’s sadness was so tangible, it still hung in the air where she’d stood moments before. Sam looked down at the photograph she had picked up from the floor of the church. It was a black-and-white picture of a little girl, no more than ten, smiling at the camera. She had corkscrew curls and wore a beautiful white dress with flowers around the waist. She turned the photograph over and read the faded writing on the back. Ivy, summer 1947.
She caught her breath. Ivy. No doubt there was more than one Ivy in Preston, but if she was nine or ten in 1947, she would have been a young woman of childbearing age by 1956 when the letters were written. Could this be the same girl?
She picked up her phone and dialled Ben’s number: no answer. She tried again and let it go to voicemail, leaving him an angry message asking him to call Nana. Then she called her grandmother.
‘Hi, Nana, it’s me. I’m so sorry, my phone was on silent. Is Emma okay?’
Nana assured her she was fine; that she had been sick but had since perked up.
‘I’ve left a message for Ben, so he should be with you soon,’ said Sam, ‘Sorry. Are you sure you’re okay? You sound a bit down.’
Nana wasn’t okay. It took Sam a while to get it out of her. There was a third letter from Ivy, she eventually explained. It was even worse than the first two.
‘I’ll call you back once I’ve written this piece. Murray needs it yesterday.’
She was as good as her word. Once she had filed her interview for the Suffragette centenary and received a dressing-down from Murray, she called Nana back, and as her grandmother read out Ivy’s third letter, neither of them could stop the tears from coming.
Chapter Sixteen
Monday 11 February 1957
My love,
She’s here, our baby is here.
I have barely been allowed to see her, but she is certainly the most beautiful baby I have ever laid eyes on. She has little tufts of hair, which is copper like mine, and bright blue eyes like yours that sparkle. She was so peaceful, she didn’t cry at all, not like her mummy, who hasn’t stopped. They let me hold her for a few minutes before they started to stitch me up, and she gripped my finger so tight in her little fist that I know she knew I was her mummy. I’m sure she smiled at me. Sister said it was nonsense and that newborn babies don’t smile. But I know she did – it was her way of trying to tell me that everything was going to be all right. I don’t remember anything after that. I think I must have fainted, as when I woke up, I was in the infirmary and Rose, as I’ve called her, was gone.
Ivy heard a key in the door at the end of the infirmary, then a bang as it opened and bumped into the wall. She pushed her pen and paper under the covers and looked up to see Sister Faith and Sister Mary Francis bustling towards her, their long starched tunics rustling as they walked. She dropped her eyes, so as not to be chastised for staring, and put her hands in her lap.
‘Well, child, there’s work to be done in the laundry. You’ve been here for a week; you can’t be lying here forever,’ said Sister Mary Francis before she’d even reached her.
‘I think she’ll be ready to go back in a couple of days, Sister,’ said Sister Faith. ‘She can still barely stand.’
Sister Mary Francis turned and scowled at the younger nun. ‘You’d be tucking them all in with eiderdown quilts and hot chocolate every night, Sister Faith, so I think I’ll judge for myself. Get up, child, and be quick about it.’
Panic trickled through Ivy as she nodded and reached for the covers, slowly pulling them back and praying that her pen and paper remained hidden. The sheet beneath her was clean, but her legs and back were caked in dried blood. She was unsure what had happened to her in the blurred days and nights that followed the birth, though she had deciphered from various mumbled conversations that she had started bleeding and wouldn’t stop. She had lain in the infirmary ever since, unable to move due to the pain between her legs.
Patricia had appeared that morning before breakfast, looking tired and pale. It was her job to change the sheets in the infirmary, and as she did so, she put a pen and paper under Ivy’s pillow. Sister Faith had left the room momentarily to fetch something from the store cupboard, and Patricia had gushed that she had seen Ivy’s baby, that she was absolutely beautiful and quite content, hardly crying at all between feeds. Ivy had cried and kissed her friend on her freckled nose, telling her to
pass it on to Rose. ‘It’s not long for you now, is it, Pat?’ she had said, stroking Patricia’s bump.
‘Is it terrible? The pain? I heard you all night,’ said Patricia, staring down at Ivy then back at the door.
‘It’s not so bad,’ Ivy had reassured her. ‘I was making a terrible fuss. You’ll be fine.’
‘Look at the terrible mess you’ve made,’ snapped Sister Mary Francis now when she saw the bloodstained bedding that Patricia had left in the corner of the room. ‘Do you not think we’ve enough to do without having to clear up after you? You can wash those sheets as soon as you’re up.’
‘Yes, Sister,’ said Ivy, wincing with the pain as she forced herself off the bed and slowly stood up. She felt sure that her legs would give way, and looked at Sister Faith with tears in her eyes.
‘Walk up and down, girl. You need to get moving or you’ll never get out of here,’ said Sister Mary Francis, tight-lipped with disapproval.
Ivy didn’t dare argue. Ignoring the burning in her groin, she took a step. Immediately her trembling legs folded beneath her and she came crashing down onto her knees.
‘Get up,’ said Sister Mary Francis grimly. Ivy stared at the floor, clutching her midriff. ‘Get up now or you’ll be taking a visit to Mother Carlin’s office.’
Sister Faith stepped forward and reached out a hand, but Sister Mary Francis put out her arm to stop her. Ivy slowly struggled to her feet, then pulled herself onto the bed.
‘Stand up,’ Sister Mary Francis barked.
‘I can’t, Sister. I’m sorry, my legs don’t work. I’m trying, I really am.’ Ivy’s whole body was shaking.
‘Stand up,’ said Sister Mary Francis again.
Slowly Ivy got to her feet, using the bed for support. She daren’t cry, though the pain tearing through her abdomen was making her feel as if she would throw up any moment. As she straightened her legs, she looked down to see drops of blood appearing on the floor by her feet.
She took a step, then caught the end of the bed as her legs went again. She came crashing down onto the floor, landing on her side, and let out a cry of pain.
‘I want her out of bed by the end of tomorrow, Sister, and she’s to wash those sheets herself,’ said Sister Mary Francis.
Ivy lay on the floor, watching Sister’s black shoes click away from her on the cold ceramic tiles.
As soon as the older nun was gone, Sister Faith helped Ivy up and back into bed. ‘She means it, you know,’ she said quietly. ‘You can’t stay in here any longer than tomorrow.’
‘Yes, Sister, I understand. I’m sorry about the mess,’ said Ivy as Sister Faith ran a cloth over the streaks of blood on the floor.
The bell on the wall began to ring out around the infirmary and Sister Faith looked at her watch. ‘I’m going to dinner. I’ll bring you back some soup.’
‘Thank you, Sister.’
Once Sister Faith had left the infirmary and locked the door behind her, Ivy eased herself up and reached for the pen and paper that were still safely under the covers. She winced as she sat up on the hard iron bed and continued to write.
I am writing this from my bed in the infirmary. The labour was terrible. I didn’t know what to expect, but I’m glad I didn’t. If the room they left me in alone all night had had windows, I would have jumped out of them. I have never known pain like it, not for a minute, and I had to endure hour after hour of it. With no one to comfort me, and no idea if it would ever end.
I knew the room they left me in already. The memories it held will stay with me for ever. Mother Carlin makes the heavily pregnant girls clean up after births that have just happened. Nothing fills you with fear more than a floor covered in blood. It was so hard to shift with cold water and very little soap; I was on my hands and knees for a whole day scrubbing once. One time, I had to clear up around a tiny baby who had died. He had been left wrapped in a bloody blanket in the bin. I took him out and held him and cried and told him he was loved, until Mother Carlin snatched him away to put him in the tank where the dead babies go. She told me not to waste my tears on the devil’s spawn and hit me so hard that her ring made a gash in my cheek.
My labour started at the end of a long day in the laundry. They wouldn’t let us use the lighter machinery, but my bump was so large I couldn’t keep up.
Ivy paused at the memory of the last day she had had Rose all to herself. The last time she had known exactly where her daughter was, and that she was safe.
The equipment in the laundry had felt even heavier than usual, and the aches and pains in her body unfamiliar. Her stomach had started cramping soon after lunch, cramps that got worse and worse until she was doubled over with the strength of them. She had walked slowly over to Sister Edith, trying not to cry out from the pain.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing? Get back to work,’ Sister Edith had snapped.
‘Sister, could I possibly work in the kitchen this afternoon? I’m having bad cramps.’
‘No you cannot. You’re not in labour; you’re not due yet. Get back to work!’
Ivy had shuffled back to her post, all eyes on her but no one daring to say a word. By dinner time, she could no longer stand. The other girls had filed out, and Mother Carlin and Sister Edith had stood over her as she crouched in the corner clutching her bump and crying out in pain.
‘Stop your fuss. You’d better get to the infirmary, child. Go on,’ Mother Carlin had said.
Ivy had waited for the last wave of cramps to finish and then staggered along the hall. She had felt such relief at talk of the infirmary. Maybe she would experience some kindness at last, some comfort. How wrong she was.
Now she composed herself and picked up her pen again. Sister Faith would be back soon and she wouldn’t have another chance to write.
When I reached the infirmary, they shut me in there all alone. The room that I had cleared of blood only a week before; a room I suspected would soon be filled with blood again.
I thought so much about that tiny dead baby when I was alone that night. I thought that the pain I was in meant our baby was going to die. Various sisters came and went, telling me to be quiet, to stop making a fuss, that it was punishment for my sins of the flesh. I tried to be brave but the pain made it impossible. I cried out for my mother, for my father, for you. But nobody came.
She stopped and put the pen and paper down next to her, then sank her head into her hands. It was too painful to remember: lying on the floor, alone in the dark, the house deathly quiet. She had begun to lose her mind with each wave of pain, and she remembered her father’s shoes appearing on the floor in front of her. They were so highly polished that she could see her face in them. She had looked up at him smiling down at her.
‘Daddy, help me.’
‘Darling, you are doing so well. I’m so proud of you.’ He had taken off his hat and crouched down next to her.
‘I’m going to die. I can’t take the pain.’
‘Yes, you can. And think what you will have when it’s over.’
Another wave of pain had hit and she had reached up for him. ‘Please look after my baby if anything happens.’
He had taken her hand. ‘Be brave, Ivy. I will always look after you, both of you.’
She shook the memory away and pinched the pen in her fingers. She had to focus on finishing the letter before Sister Faith returned.
I think I was close to death when Dr Jacobson came. I begged him to save my baby and so he cut me, so much I thought he had sawn me in two. Then I heard her cry and there she was. Our baby. I asked Dr Jacobson if he had seen my mother. I begged him to take me home. But he wouldn’t talk to me and just left me there with Rose. Hopefully he will tell Mother about her.
After Dr Jacobson left, they stitched me up. This was even more painful than the birth itself. The nun stitching me was clumsy and old and kept dropping her reading glasses. I have been unable to walk for days, but Sister tells me I need to go back to work soon to earn my keep. I have written to Mother an
d Uncle Frank asking if they can pay the £100 I owe for my stay here, but they have not replied. I am told that the standard stay is three years. I will go mad if I have to stay that long.
They put the nursery next to the infirmary, and I can hear the babies crying all day and night. Apparently it’s another part of the punishment. I am losing my mind thinking I can hear Rose cry and not being able to go to her.
My milk has come in, but we are not allowed to feed our babies as nature intended. They are given formula milk instead. Maybe this is to break the bond between mother and baby. I have been given tablets to make my milk dry up, but they’re not working fast enough. I leak at night and am terribly sore. Sister gets furious when my sheets are wet. She is tired of me being in the infirmary, tired of my tears. Tired of my fuss.
I miss my baby so much. I cannot bear that someone else is going to take her away from here. She belongs with me, with us.
Please, my love, come and get us, so that we may be a family at last. Please, come quickly, before Rose is adopted and lost to us for ever.
With all my love,
Your Ivy
As she wrote the last word, Ivy heard the key in the lock and quickly pushed the letter into the envelope Patricia had brought. Sister Faith was carrying a bowl of clear soup, a bread roll in her other hand. ‘Here you are.’
‘Thank you, Sister.’ Ivy took the warm bowl gratefully.
‘We’ll need to put those sheets in to soak or they’ll never come clean,’ Sister Faith said, not unkindly.
‘Sorry for the trouble, Sister,’ said Ivy. ‘I’ll do it now.’ She went to put the bowl down.
‘I’ll do it; you need to rest. Mother Carlin is coming for you in the morning and you’ll have to get back to work.’
‘Thank you,’ said Ivy, and began to eat her meagre dinner hungrily.
Chapter Seventeen
Sunday 5 February 2017
Sam pulled up outside Ben’s flat with a heavy heart. She still remembered the day they had found it, traipsing round countless dives while she was heavily pregnant until they had been shown this place and fallen in love with it. It had needed a lick of paint and some TLC, but it had a small patio garden and the lounge had a woodburner. They had moved in the day after the wedding and Ben had tried to carry her over the threshold, but as she was eight months pregnant, he had put his back out.