Ribbons in Her Hair

by Colette McCormick

  But it turned out that Helen didn’t get into grammar school. Julie didn’t either, but then I’d never expected her to because she took after Mick’s mother. All my hopes rested on Susan.

  Helen did all right at school. I had hoped that she might have stopped on but she didn’t want to know about it. After her exam results there probably wasn’t much point anyway.

  ‘You’ve got to think about your future,’ I told her.

  ‘I am,’ she said, ‘that’s why I’m going to secretarial college.’

  It was better than nothing I suppose.

  There was a lad from the next street that stopped on. His mother was so proud. She mentioned it every time I saw her. She always made a point of asking how Helen was doing at college.

  The trouble with Helen and college was the people she met. She might have been doing a secretarial course there but they taught other things at that college as well. Things like carpentry and mechanics. Helen started going out after college with her new friends. She said that there weren’t any lads there but I know that there were. She must have thought that I was stupid. She was a sensible enough girl though. Julie was the one with an eye for the lads but she wasn’t the type to get caught.

  I didn’t think that I’d have a problem with lads pestering Susan. Not unless things changed. Susan was a dumpy kid, not a bit like me or her sisters and her hair tended to be greasy which made it hang like rats’ tails. She had pretty enough eyes but her face was a bit plain. I didn’t see lads being a problem for her.

  Even so she was Mick’s favourite, just like I’d always known she would be.

  I think Susan was about nine or ten when Mick’s hours got cut at work. We were lucky that he didn’t lose his job all together but it did leave us a bit short. Now I would have to get a job. Mick knew it as well as I did but he was worried about what would happen to his precious Susan.

  ‘I’ve seen Pat next door,’ I told him. ‘She says that she’ll bring Susan home and let her stay there playing with their Maggie until I get home. It’ll only be for a couple of hours a day anyway.’

  I don’t think Mick was very happy about Susan being at a neighbour’s house every day after school but we had no choice, we needed the money.

  We needed it even more a few years later when Helen came home and said that she was getting married. She’d been going with Robert for a while but even so it was still a bit of a surprise. At least they’d booked the church ten months ahead so we had a bit of time to save up for it.

  Less than a year after Helen’s nuptials, Julie was getting married as well. It wasn’t going to be the flash affair that Helen had had and I thanked God for that. Helen’s reception had cost us a fortune. Julie said she wanted something more ‘personal’, which turned out to mean smaller, which suited me just fine. There was a bit of nonsense about the dress. Julie wanted an off-white dress – oyster or ivory or something she called it – but I soon put her straight. She’d get married in white and like it.

  With two daughters safely married that just left Susan to worry about and, like I’ve said, I didn’t think that would be a problem.

  Helen made us grandparents in the June of the year after they were married. She had a baby boy and called him James Anthony. I tried to give Helen pointers about what she should do with the baby but I might as well have saved my breath for all the good it did. I loved being a grandma though; it fulfilled me in a way that being a mother never had.

  ***

  I looked at Susan one day and saw that she was growing up fast. She was a clever girl and doing all right at school. I even thought that she might go to university – well, hoped she would. She didn’t seem that keen on the idea, but at least she planned on stopping on at school until she was eighteen, which was something.

  She came home from school one day and said that one of the lasses in her class was going to a party and wanted her to go too. She wanted to know if she could go. I was touched by her asking because it was something that the other two had never done. I said that she could go, as long as she wasn’t home too late. I was happy for her – I hadn’t realised that she had any friends.

  There were more parties after that one. It seemed like she was having a good time and that I hadn’t been wrong about not having to worry about the lads chasing Susan. There was one boy eventually, but that didn’t last very long. The ones that followed didn’t last very long either and I didn’t even meet most of them. But then she brought Tim home.

  My heart sank when I saw them walking hand in hand. What the hell was she doing with him? Tim was Margaret and Billy Preston’s youngest lad and he’d always been a tearaway.

  But Susan wasn’t having any of it. The more I told her that she could do better the less she listened. Then suddenly he decided that he was the one that could do better and he packed her in just before Christmas. My prayers had been answered. But then the nightmare began.

  I think it was in the February that she was eighteen that I realised Susan had missed her period. Over the years I’d learned the tricks my own mam had used. It didn’t matter how careful you were, there were always tell-tale signs that you were on your period. I’d always checked the girl’s beds for signs that they were on but this time I searched without luck.

  Oh my God! I felt sick at the thought that my suspicions might be right.

  I faced Susan with my suspicions and gave her a pregnancy test to do. I breathed a sigh of relief when it was negative but when she still hadn’t got her period a few days later I gave her a pot to pee in and told her to take it to the doctor’s.

  SUSAN

  Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! The words just repeated themselves in my head as I sat facing the doctor. There had to be some mistake. I’d taken a test before and it had been negative. He had to be wrong. I hadn’t come here for this. He had to be wrong.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Susan,’ the doctor said as he looked at me over those silly, half-moon glasses that sat on the end of his nose. I don’t remember his name but I still remember the way he looked at me. He looked at me with sympathy – or was it pity? It was hard to tell. But that look … there are some things the mind won’t let you forget.

  I just looked back at him and whispered, ‘It’s okay.’

  Except it wasn’t okay. It was anything but okay, but that wasn’t his fault.

  I must have walked out of the surgery but to be honest I don’t remember doing it. I was in a daze and when I came to my senses I was sitting on the bench outside the doctor’s watching the world go by. People were laughing. How could they be laughing? Looking back now it’s easy to understand; their worlds weren’t falling apart. It was just mine that was.

  ‘What the hell am I going to do?’ I asked myself the question over and over again. ‘What the hell am I going to do?’

  Have you ever had one of those moments when fate seems to intervene and something outside of you takes over? Well, I had one of those moments then. I turned to my right and saw the number 7 bus coming down the street. The number 7 stopped just around the corner from Julie’s house. I had to see Julie. We hadn’t been that close growing up but that had changed after Helen had left home. I often thought of what Julie had said to me on the night before she got married when she’d told me to be strong. I would need to be strong now and I would need Julie to help me.

  The bus was coming and it was Wednesday. Julie never worked on Wednesdays so it was like someone was telling me to go there. So I did.

  Julie had flour in her hair when she answered the door. ‘Susan!’ she seemed surprised to see me which I suppose was perfectly understandable. It wasn’t as if I was a regular visitor to her house; I don’t think I’d ever gone on my own before and certainly never unannounced. I burst out crying as I stood on her doorstep, my whole body shaking as I sobbed.

  ‘Oh, come on, Susan,’ she said putting her arm around me. ‘What’s the matter?’

  I could only look at her because I didn’t have the words that I needed.

  �
�Come on in,’ she said, and I let Julie lead me wherever she wanted to. She had to move me because it felt like I couldn’t move myself. By the time I was sitting at the kitchen table my jacket was covered in the flour that had been on Julie’s hands as well as in her hair. It was the least of my worries. As I sat at the table I was still crying but at least the sobbing had stopped.

  Without me realising, Julie had made a pot of tea and she put a mug of it in front of me. I noticed that it was a flowery mug, a wedding present probably.

  Julie didn’t say anything for a long time and neither did I.

  Eventually I said, ‘I’m pregnant.’

  Julie looked at me with her mug half way between her mouth and the table. Slowly she put it down.

  ‘Pregnant?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Does she know?’

  I didn’t need to ask who the ‘she’ was that Julie was talking about. I shook my head. ‘No, I only saw the doctor today.’

  ‘What made you go to the doctor’s?’

  ‘She told me to go.’

  ‘So she does know.’

  ‘Not what he said, just that I was going.’

  ‘Does she know what time you were going?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. I honestly didn’t know.

  ‘Where does she think you are at the minute?’

  ‘Don’t know. Still at the doctor’s I suppose.’

  Julie took a deep breath and stretched her hands out across the table. I held them and now my hands were covered in flour too.

  ‘Whose is it?’

  ‘Tim’s.’

  ‘Preston’s? Mum said you’d split up.’

  ‘We have.’ I was looking at the mug of tea on the table but I could feel Julie looking at me.

  ‘How far along are you?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘About eight weeks I think.’

  We sat in silence, holding hands, for a long time.

  After a while Julie squeezed my hands. ‘I’d better ring her.’

  ‘Why?’ It was almost a scream.

  ‘Because you don’t need to make things any worse than they already are.’

  How could they possibly be any worse? I didn’t hear the telephone conversation but when she came back into the kitchen, Julie said, ‘I told her that me and Chris will drop you off later.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘Did you tell her?’

  ‘No love,’ she said gently. ‘That’s down to you, I’m afraid.’

  I started to cry again.

  ***

  I don’t think Chris asked why I was sitting at his kitchen table. He didn’t ask why there was an unfilled pastry case sitting on the bench either. He didn’t say anything when Julie told him that they would have to take me home, he just picked up his keys from where he had dropped them and went back out to the car,

  Nobody said anything as we made the relatively short drive back to my parents’ house and I was pleased about that. Julie sat in the back of the car with me and from time to time Chris would look at me through his rear-view mirror and smile. After he’d stopped the car we all sat for a second or two before Julie gave my arm a squeeze and said that we had to go in.

  I looked at Chris in the mirror one last time. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘it’ll be fine.’

  I wished that I could have shared his optimism but I appreciated the sentiment and I tried to force a smile onto my face. I don’t think I managed it.

  ‘I’ll not be long,’ Julie told him but he told her to take as long as she needed.

  Chris was a lovely bloke and Julie was very lucky.

  Mum had her back to the kitchen door as we went in. I’m sure she heard us but she didn’t turn around. Her shoulders heaved up and down as she washed pots in the sink and I could sense her anger. Eventually she turned her head and looked at us over her shoulder. Julie grabbed my hand and we stood by the door together.

  ‘Wasn’t expecting you, Julie,’ Mum said. ‘Chris not with you?’

  ‘He’s in the car.’

  ‘Is he not coming in?’

  ‘No.’

  Mum snatched a tea towel from the drainer and dried her hands. She turned all the way round and the tension was painted all over her face. She tossed the towel aside and leaned back against the sink with her arms folded across her chest. Her mouth was twisted to one side and her eyes were cold,

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘Well what?’ The words were out before I could stop them. It was a stupid thing to say and it just made her angrier, if such a thing was possible.

  ‘Don’t mess about with me, Susan,’ she said sternly, ‘What did the doctor say?’

  I swear that was the moment that I felt my stomach hit the back of my throat.

  ‘He said I’m pregnant,’ I whispered and I felt Julie squeeze my hand even harder.

  Mum let her head fall back so that she was looking up at the ceiling. Her chest heaved as she took deep breaths. It was like she was struggling to breathe and for a second I thought she was going to have a heart attack. Then she looked at me again.

  ‘Your dad’s in there.’ She nodded towards the living room. ‘You’d better go and tell him.’

  ‘But…’ I started to say.

  ‘But nothing, lady,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘I said your dad’s in there and you’d best go and tell him.’

  ***

  Dad wasn’t really watching the television. It was on but his head was half turned towards the kitchen like he had been listening to what had been going on in there. ‘Susan?’ he turned his head completely as I closed the door behind me. ‘What’s wrong Susan?’ he asked as he turned the rest of his body in his chair to look at me.

  Every part of me was trembling. I didn’t know what to say or even where to start. In the end all I could do was take a deep breath and stammer out the words, ‘I’m sorry Dad, but I’m pregnant.’

  The look of disappointment on his face almost broke my heart. I couldn’t stand to look at it because I knew I had let him down. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I said again and ran from the room. I ran up the stairs and into my bedroom closing the door behind me.

  A few minutes later I heard a car start and I knew that Julie and Chris had left. I was alone with my parents and I didn’t know what to expect next. I was scared beyond anything that I had felt before.

  After a while I heard my parents talking in the kitchen which was directly below my bedroom. I could hear the voices but not what they were saying. I knew they would be talking about me though and I wanted – needed – to know what they were saying, so I carefully crept to the door and opened it a crack.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m getting the blame for this, Mick.’ Mum said. Her voice was high, almost a screech and her words were crystal clear, but Dad’s voice was lower and deeper and came across as a rumble so I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  ‘Yeah well it’s not my fault.’ There was a pause and the next time I heard Mum her voice wasn’t quite so high-pitched. ‘I just don’t believe it. Julie I could have understood, but not Susan. I’d never thought that this would have happened to Susan.’

  Why not me I thought? What was wrong with me?

  ‘It’s a bloody mess, that’s all I know,’ I heard Dad say. They must have moved into the living room because now I could hear both sides of the conversation. ‘He’ll have to marry her,’ Dad said and the thought of me being married to Tim Preston made me feel cold all over. I screamed one word in my head: No!

  ‘Over my dead body,’ Mum said, and for once we were in agreement.

  ‘Well what else can we do? The lad should face up to his responsibilities.’

  ‘I don’t know much,’ Mum said, ‘but I know that I’ll not have a Preston in this family.’

  ‘Bit late for that, Jean,’ Dad said. ‘We’ve already got a Preston in the family and she’s carrying it in her belly.’

  I thought I was going to throw up.

 
; ‘What about your Aunty Rose?’ Mum asked.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘We could send Susan to live with her in Scarborough until the baby’s born. She could put the baby up for adoption and come back afterwards and no one will ever know.’

  ‘Are you mad woman?’ Dad said. ‘My Aunty Rose is ninety-four for a start and even if she did go where are we supposed to say that she’s been?’

  ‘Scarborough.’

  ‘For nine months? Some bloody holiday that is. No, we can’t do that.’

  ‘Well I don’t know what else we can do.’

  Apparently my dad didn’t know either because all I could hear was silence from below.

  I sat on the floor with my knees pulled up to my chin and thought about the mess that I’d got myself into.

  As I thought about what Mum had said, I felt sick. Not the bit about Dad’s Aunty Rose, I wouldn’t have minded spending some time with her. We hadn’t seen her for years but she had always been nice to me. But she was far too old to be involved in what Mum was planning. I didn’t even want to be involved in what Mum was planning, especially not the part about giving the baby up for adoption. Like it or not, I was having a baby and it was part of me. It was part of them too, yet here she was talking about me giving it to a complete stranger. How could she do that? I couldn’t imagine how I would be able to give it away; I would constantly be looking over my shoulder every time I passed a child that was the same age and sex wondering if it was mine. No, I couldn’t give it away, I just couldn’t. Somehow I was going to have to convince Mum that was a bad idea.

  Eventually I made my way back to my bed and lay down. I felt drained. I turned onto my side and pulled my knees up to my chest. Wasn’t this what they called the foetal position? Is this how my baby was lying in my womb?

  My baby. My baby. My baby. I emphasised each word in my head. A baby was a helpless thing, something that had to be looked after, and this was my baby so I was the one that was going to have to look after it.