The Doorstep Child

by Annie Murray

  Cath was not there, no doubt because she had Robbie to put to bed, and Evie didn’t know a soul. She was full of all her old uncertainty as she sat down with them, on guard as she had always been with her sisters, waiting for trouble and rejection. What would they think of her? She was so much younger than most of them and they would think she was rough and that she didn’t belong. But she had been overwhelmed by how welcoming they were. They gave her tips about life in Canada and treated her like a younger sister. She had relaxed, felt less shy and had a laugh with them as her confidence grew. They were all surprised to find out that she was not yet twenty-one.

  ‘Oh, you’re such a sweet young thing,’ one of the older ladies, in her forties, said, patting Evie’s hand. It was only later in the evening that Evie realized the woman was Don Sorenson’s wife, Edith. ‘We’ll have to keep a little eye out for you!’

  It had all been gentle and friendly and it made her feel so much better. People seemed to be easy-going and kind. Maybe she could even fit in. Like Jack said, they could leave their old lives behind and start afresh. She felt hopeful tonight.

  ‘All this business about drinking sitting down,’ Jack said, shaking his head in bewilderment. ‘I mean, I was sat there, with a beer. After a bit, I got up to go and talk to Don over the other side, picked up my glass and the waiter comes over. Oh no, sir, you’re not allowed to carry your own drink across the room!’ His voice was incredulous.

  Evie laughed. ‘I never thought it’d be this different. I mean, they all speak English. But nothing’s the same at all.’

  She was enjoying this moment, both of them puzzling out their Englishness versus the new Canadian way. She kicked her shoes off, tucked her feet under her and cuddled up to Jack. It felt lovely sitting like that, just the two of them. Should this be the moment she told him about the baby?

  A warm, expectant feeling stole through her and she turned to Jack, the words ready on her lips. But just as she opened her mouth, Jack pushed himself more upright and looked down at her in the intense way he sometimes did.

  ‘It’s different, but it’s good,’ he said. Her mind jerked back to the track of their former conversation from which she had long moved on, leaving him behind. It was as if he needed to repeat that he had made the best choice in coming here. He relaxed back again and gave a rueful smile. ‘Could do with a decent pub, though! Any road, Bill and Red and some of the others asked me out on a fishing trip with them.’

  Evie felt a pang, like a chill. She felt herself withdraw. The fishing trip was only for him, obviously. ‘Oh. That’s nice.’ He didn’t notice her flat tone. Once again he was caught up in his male world. ‘When?’

  ‘Sat’day.’

  ‘You going?’

  ‘Yeah, course!’

  He didn’t ask her what she was going to do all day. She felt distant from him again suddenly and decided her news could wait.

  But soon she could not keep it to herself any longer. She picked her moment: that Saturday morning, before he was to go off on the fishing trip.

  The mornings were easier for her now. The sickness had died away and she woke aflutter with excitement. Jack was still asleep and she slipped out of bed into the already warm morning to make tea in the tin teapot and two white mugs she had bought in town. She carried them to the bedroom, placed them on the cheap little deal chests of drawers on each side of the bed.

  ‘Wakey-wakey.’ She looked down at him, his handsome face lost in sleep, and thought how lovely he looked. She kissed his cheek, feeling the prickle of stubble. ‘Someone’s going fishing.’

  This thought woke him abruptly. He stirred, smiled.

  ‘I made some tea,’ she said, climbing back in beside him. A shaft of sunlight fell across the bed.

  They sipped tea, warm and close. When she judged he was awake enough, she put her cup down and linked her hand with his.

  ‘Love? I’ve got summat to tell you.’

  ‘Umm?’ He did not sound especially curious.

  Her heart pounded now. ‘Thing is, I . . . We . . .’ She watched his face, anxious for the response.

  Jack gave a laugh. ‘Well, come on, spit it out. Can’t be that bad.’

  ‘We’re . . . I mean, I’m in the family way, Jack.’

  It took seconds for him to grasp her meaning. ‘What?’ He stared at her. ‘You . . . What, a kid, yer mean? You can’t be!’ He pulled the bedclothes back and looked in bewilderment at her body. ‘There’s nothing there!’

  Evie laughed at the sight of his face. ‘I’m barely four months gone yet. You don’t just get big straight away, Jack, the babby has to grow.’

  He looked really pole-axed. ‘But . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Well . . . I mean it’s quite soon, isn’t it? I never thought it’d happen this quick.’

  ‘Jack, we’ve been married months, and it’s not as if we’ve taken precautions every time, is it? You’re not exactly keen on those rubber things.’ This was true. And there were also times when she had not reminded him . . .

  ‘But I just never . . . I thought it just took a bit longer, like.’

  ‘I don’t know what made you think that, love,’ she said, the amusement dying in her eyes as a coldness filled her again. This was her news, the most important news she could ever tell him, but Jack did not look pleased. He looked really put out.

  As she was speaking he swung his legs out of bed and was sitting with his back to her. She felt horrible, shut out, as if she had done something terribly wrong and this was all her fault. A lost, vulnerable feeling came over her at the sight of him turned away from her, as if she was alone in the world all over again. She wanted him to hold her, love her, tell her he was happy, that it was what he had always wanted.

  He sat for a moment, saying nothing.

  ‘I mean,’ she said huskily, ‘you want kids, don’t you, Jack? It’s what everyone does, isn’t it? All those men – Red and Bill and whoever, they’ve all got children. It’s what you do. It’ll make you fit in, won’t it? And . . .’ She could hardly speak for the hard ache in her throat. ‘It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I really want a family, Jack – a nice family, of our own.’

  Hearing this, he turned, looking at her as if thinking about it.

  ‘Yeah.’ After another pause, he said, ‘I s’pose you’re right.’ He nodded. ‘Yeah. A kid . . . well, well. I s’pose that’s the right thing. And it’ll give you summat to do, won’t it?’

  Relief coursed through her. ‘Oh Jack!’ Tears ran down her face. ‘I’m so happy. I want to be such a good mother. I can hardly wait ’til she arrives.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Well . . . or he. I don’t know! Oh, give me a cuddle and tell me you’re glad too?’

  He came onto the bed and held her, resting his chin on her head. She could hear the rhythm of his heart, smell his warm, man smell, feel the strength in him. Her man. He would look after her and they would be a family.

  ‘How long have you known?’ he asked.

  ‘Not long,’ she said.

  ‘Right. Well. Better get used to the idea.’ He released her gently, seeming stunned but coming round to the idea. ‘Canadian kids, we’ll have.’

  He gave her a final kiss, though it felt perfunctory, before getting to his feet.

  ‘Best get going,’ he said.

  She sank back onto the pillow, still needing more from him. ‘Jack . . . I love you.’

  He turned, managed to meet her eyes. He still looked shocked, she thought. ‘T’ra, kid,’ he said.

  Evie smiled at the closing door. Jack was never a great one for pouring out his feelings. But he was pleased, she told herself. Of course he was.

  Thirty-Six

  Those early weeks in Canada were exhausting. Expecting a child added to the fatigue of coping with new places, new faces, and all the other strange things she had to get used to.

  The few things they had had shipped over arrived at last and they now had all their clothes and a
small number of knick-knacks: cheap ornaments that she had not been able to resist buying in Birmingham. There were a pair of orange-brown china corgis which she thought were sweet, a china girl with a garland of flowers round her head and a little pale green vase. She arranged her treasures round the house.

  Added to that was their new car. She gasped with amazement when Jack appeared in it, sitting in the passenger seat beside Don Sorenson, wearing a grin from ear to ear.

  ‘How d’you like this nice little Chevvy, gal?’ Don said, getting out. He patted the car’s pale-green-painted boot – trunk, he would say, Evie had already learned. ‘Young Jack’s got to get his licence but that won’t take long. I’ll give a hand and then you folks’ll be on the road!’

  ‘How’re we going to afford that?’ she asked, when Don had gone, sweetly saying he would walk home, that it would do him good.

  ‘Oh, it’s on the strap,’ Jack said airily, walking round the car, gazing at it with devotion. ‘Hire purchase, they call it. We can afford it. It ain’t new, but it’s in good nick.’ He squatted down, staring at the hub caps. Then, sounding Canadian, he added to himself, ‘It sure looks good.’

  It was true. The car was astonishing – so big and comfortable looking. Jack soon learned to drive and they gradually got to know the town – the central streets with shops and the pretty area around Lake Glass, where churches and houses reflected in the still water and where families had picnics and played games in the parkland. There was the south-east section where Jack worked, lines of factories, but not crammed in close like in Birmingham. And there were residential streets like their own, wide and quiet and lined with low-rise houses. At the far end, away from town, the houses petered out into farmland and the road joined the main highway towards Calgary and the Rocky Mountains.

  Over those first weeks, as well as the company wives, Cath introduced Evie to some of the other women in the neighbourhood and she soon belonged to a group of women who were to become her best friends and the support of her life in Canada: Patsy, Jean, Lois and Cath and, of course, Bea – especially Bea. Evie had taken to her straight away and the two of them had really hit it off. If only she had had a real sister like Bea, Evie thought.

  Bea had stopped work now as she was soon to have her baby and she had exchanged her nurse’s uniform for slacks and comfortable, informal clothes, which most of them wore. Bea, with her Cheshire accent and friendly, kindly ways, had quickly become very important to Evie. She and her husband Stan lived in the next street, in a house like Evie and Jack’s, with a little square of grass at the front and a grassy yard at the back.

  Cath and Bea soon drew Evie into a circle of women, mostly British, who met in each other’s houses and had young children. They passed the time together, drank tea, talked about home and, as Bea put it, helped ‘keep each other from going off our rockers’.

  ‘I remember when we first came here,’ she told them one afternoon when a group of them were chatting together in Bea’s homely living room facing out to the yard. ‘Stan and I, being English and everything, thought we’d go out for a walk. So we went off out into the fields.’ She got to her feet and mimed two people striding along with absurd determination. ‘It was the summer and I had a frock on. I stopped to look at some flower or other and the next thing I knew, I was covered! I mean my legs were black – it was horrible!’

  ‘What was it?’ Evie said, shuddering. The others all laughed.

  ‘Black fly – thousands of them. Ugh.’ Bea held her fists clenched up to her chin, mimicking her frozen horror at the time and the others all laughed. It somehow looked even funnier because she was quite heavily pregnant.

  ‘Well, that was a lesson,’ one of the others said.

  ‘Oh, there’ve been plenty of those.’ Bea subsided back into her chair. ‘You don’t want to go wandering off out there, Evie.’

  ‘I’m not one for going for walks like that,’ she said, thinking with a sinking heart of the bleak, endless prairie beyond Rosette’s rough boundary. ‘I’m a townie, me.’

  ‘The biggest lesson, Evie,’ Bea went on, ‘is the Canadian winter. Oh my. You’ve no idea what you’ve let yourself in for.’

  Evie was always hearing dire warnings about the winter – how long it went on for, how deep the snow, how cold the weather, how mothers spent half the day just dressing their children to get them outside. Soon, she thought, she would be doing the same.

  ‘I’ll have to buy some more clothes,’ she kept saying.

  ‘Oh, you will,’ they urged. ‘Layers and layers. And you’re having a winter baby!’

  She had asked Cath not to tell everyone she was expecting until she was ready. But when they eventually heard she was going to have her first baby, the news was greeted with cries of enthusiasm and everyone hugged and kissed her.

  ‘It’s going to be a cracking baby,’ Bea said, hugging her, ‘what with your looks and that handsome husband of yours!’

  Evie felt special and truly part of the group.

  She built up a picture of the town through their eyes. Everything seemed to revolve round the ‘League’ as they called it, the social centre of the veterans, the Royal Canadian Legion. There was the library, the churches and the curling rink. She had to learn curling, they told her. It was fun and got you moving in the winter. For the men there was fishing and icy hockey games to play, or at least to watch.

  The only thing that was awkward was when they all asked questions about her family and how they felt about her being so far away. It was easier just to say she had no family. These women felt more like sisters now and she knew that when the baby came she would have help and people from whom she could ask advice. They were so kind and to her amazement they all seemed to accept her. She was part of a group – on the inside. It was the best feeling she had had in a long time. With a shock, she sometimes felt she was closer to her women friends than she was to Jack.

  Thirty-Seven

  November 1964

  ‘There you go, dear. Here she is, a lovely little girl!’

  It was four o’clock in the morning, after Jack had driven her to Rosette Hospital between the snow banks which rose up on each side of the road like white giants in the moonlight. Evie had groaned and gasped through the contractions as they crawled along. Jack kept saying things like, ‘Hold on, for God’s sake,’ sounding really alarmed. He kept snatching anxious looks at her as she writhed around. In between the pains she giggled at the sight of his face because she knew she was not ready to give birth – experience told her there was road left to walk yet – only Jack was not used to this and did not know it.

  She had laboured through the night. Compared with last time – a last time that no one knew about except her, or if the staff of Rosette Hospital noticed anything they did not say – it was a very different experience. The pain was the same – the rolling, thunderous waves of it. But inwardly, Evie knew that this time she could keep the person that she was about to meet. This time it was all approval – she was a married woman. Nothing was shrouded in shame and grief. Not like with her poor little Julie. Just as she had carried the baby with joy, she gave birth with hope.

  She was encouraged by friendly Canadian accents as a tiny being forced itself out and into the world.

  ‘Here you are, Mrs Harrison, meet your beautiful little girl.’

  The smiling nurse swaddled the child and Evie reached hungrily for her, could hardly believe that at last she was holding the real, solid weight of her. And her weight in the world was allowed because a momentary vow in a church had changed everything. She took one look at the crumpled, mouthing face and sobs wrenched up from inside her as she took in the sight of her. She was everything for which Evie had yearned for so long and she burst into gulping tears.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ The nurse seemed quite put out. ‘There’s no need for all that, is there, Mrs Harrison?’

  ‘But she’s just so lovely!’ Evie wept, tears falling onto the baby’s cheeks. ‘I can hardly believe it.’
r />   ‘She is.’ The nurse softened. ‘And you’ve done very well.’ She patted Evie’s shoulder. ‘A good weight too. Almost eight pounds. She’s a beauty.’

  Beautiful didn’t seem a big enough word. Evie gazed and gazed at her. She was everything. She was the world. Later she could remember nothing much about being cleaned up in the hospital, or other details. Just the baby, there in front of her, her mouth suckling and a feeling of completion, as if a raw gap in her was being filled.

  Then people began to come: Jack first, later that day, when both she and the baby were washed and rested. Seeing him come along the little ward, which held only eight beds, Evie sat up, eagerly, grimacing at her soreness which she had almost forgotten.

  Jack looked bashful and out of place. He leaned down in a stiff way and kissed her. There were melting snowflakes on his coat and his cheeks smelt of cold.

  ‘You all right, wench?’ he asked gruffly.

  ‘Yes. And she’s fine. She’s so lovely, Jack.’ She wanted him to be brim full of joy, the way she was. At least he’s here, she told herself. What more could she want? ‘They’ll bring her in for us in a minute. She’s due for a feed. Is it snowing again?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He sat by the bed in his coat, looking masculine and handsome and uncomfortable in this place of women. He seemed not to know what to say next, but just then one of the nurses came in carrying the baby. Evie held her arms out for her. She hated being parted from her little girl even for a moment, haunted by the fear that they might take her away . . .

  ‘Here she is.’ She held her out for Jack to see. He peered down at the face, her swimmy eyes open, trying to take things in. ‘Isn’t she the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?’