Her future was about to be decided, and she felt sick with apprehension.
Looking down at the ground, Maggie stared at the familiar runner on the floor in the hall as she followed Ruby into the dining room to find Johnnie sitting at the table surrounded by assorted pieces of paper in what looked like orderly piles. Ruby then went straight over and sat beside him and immediately picked up a piece of paper and started fiddling with it. Maggie knew she was meant to sit down at the table also, so she deliberately didn’t.
Despite the fact that the couple weren’t sitting in either Babs’ or George’s chairs, they still looked too comfortable at the table for Maggie’s liking, and it irked her. She didn’t want them sitting at the family dining table, which had only ever been used for special occasions – the table which had been decorated in celebration of every Christmas, Easter and family birthday she had ever known, the table where her birthday cakes had always stood in celebration. It was special, and she hated seeing it used as a makeshift office desk while her parents were lying cold in the ground not a mile down the road. It felt so disrespectful. But she bit her lip and kept quiet.
Determined not to sit with them, she walked across and leaned her back against the familiar sideboard, a family heirloom from George’s side of the family, which had always overpowered the room and everything else in it. Maggie had always thought it huge and ugly and she hated it, as did Babs, who had often grumbled that it took up too much room and that the highly carved nooks and drawers were dust collectors, but now she felt the urge to stand by the familiar piece of furniture; she wanted to be able to touch it for reassurance.
What had been a monstrosity now seemed like a comforting constant in her rapidly changing life.
‘Come and sit down, Maggie,’ Johnnie said gently. ‘Please? Come and sit with us.’
‘I’d sooner stand. Where’s Mr Solicitor? I thought he wanted to talk to me. The old duffer said he did when I saw him outside.’
‘He does. As you’re a beneficiary, he has to explain the legalities of the wills to you, but we have to talk to you first. He’s only gone for a walk down to the shops; he said he needed some tobacco for his smelly old pipe, so I pointed him in the right direction,’ Ruby said, still fiddling with the papers on the table. ‘He’s coming back in a while for the finer details.’
Maggie felt increasingly on alert as she watched the way Ruby and Johnnie kept looking at each other nervously. She knew her life was about to change, that she wouldn’t be able to stay in that house alone, but she was hoping against hope that she could at least stay in the village as she’d asked, maybe live with one of her friend’s families. She was certain her parents would have left her enough of an inheritance to be able to do that.
As Ruby started to frantically shuffle even more of the papers that were on the table, Johnnie reached over and put a hand on top of hers to still the movements.
‘This is really difficult, Maggie, and we know it’s going to be a huge shock, but there are things we need to talk to you about, to tell you. Things you don’t know,’ Johnnie said.
‘I know. You’ve got to tell me what happens next now I’m a poor little orphan,’ Maggie sneered, ‘but Mr Solicitor Man is in charge of that, isn’t he? Why isn’t he here? Maybe he’s going to adopt me, maybe I was left to him; now that’d be a turn up for the books, wouldn’t it?’ Her tone was defiant and angry, but inside Maggie was scared witless, and she could feel her heart thumping so hard in her chest that it felt as if her whole body was vibrating. She desperately wanted to know what was planned for her, but at the same time she didn’t want to know – she wanted to run.
Again, she saw Ruby and Johnnie exchange worried glances.
‘There’s something we have to tell you, and we all decided it was best if we told you without anyone else here because it’s so personal.’
‘Why is all of this any of your business? It should be Mr Smethurst talking to me, not you, not either of you.’
‘I’m sorry, Maggie, but you see it is our business. George and Babs left very specific wills. There are arrangements in place for you …’ She paused and again looked at Johnnie. ‘Maggie, darling, you’re going to come and live with us in Southend. You’re going to be part of our family. It’s what they wanted, it’s what we want.’
Maggie looked from one to the other and thought for a moment. Southend? ‘It’s not what I want! I’m not going to Southend. I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here; this is my home! I can have a housekeeper, or I can go and stay with friends until I leave school and get a job. I could get a job now; I’m old enough.’ Maggie could feel the hysteria rising, but she couldn’t stop it. ‘Mum and Dad would never have done that to me! They wouldn’t make me live with you in bloody Southend. They knew I hate you …’
Visibly stunned at the verbal onslaught, Ruby took a deep breath. Johnnie reached his hand out, but she brushed it aside and stood up. She walked over to where Maggie was standing. ‘Maggie, I’m sorry. I know you won’t like what we have to tell you, but I spoke to the solicitor at length and we discussed George and Babs’ wills every which way they could be discussed. Both George and Babs named me and Johnnie as your guardians, until you’re twenty-one.’
‘What do you mean?’ Maggie asked angrily, unable to believe what she was hearing. ‘Why would they do that?’
‘Because there is no one else to look after you, and also because they knew that was what we would want to do. We had talked about it long ago, but none of us thought for a moment they would both go together. They thought one of them at least would be around to see you well into adulthood.’
As Ruby paused, Maggie saw her exchange another look with Johnnie. Ruby’s eyes’ were wide as she stared pleadingly at her husband for a few moments before looking back at Maggie.
‘Maggie, darling, let’s go and sit down. Please?’ Ruby said, touching her arm very gently, but Maggie shrugged her off.
‘I’d sooner stand. Just get this over with. I’m meant to be somewhere that isn’t here with you creeps.’ Maggie rolled her eyes to the ceiling in a display of bravado. She tried to cross her arms, but her plaster got in the way. Instead she hooked her good hand into the loop of her skirt defiantly.
‘Maggie, there’s something you don’t know – something we both didn’t want you to find out this way, not from us. But your mum and dad’s death and the wording of the wills means we have no choice.’
Again the pause followed by a deep intake of breath as Ruby braced herself.
‘Just get on with it,’ Maggie said.
‘Please believe me when I say I didn’t want it to be like this …’ Ruby put an arm around Maggie’s shoulder. ‘Your mum and dad were just that, your mum and dad, and you know how much they adored you but … I’m so sorry, Maggie, there’s no easy way to say this … You were adopted as a baby. George and Babs weren’t your birth parents.’
Maggie stood perfectly still for a few moments. She blinked hard as she tried to understand what Ruby was saying to her, then with no warning she spun round and slapped Ruby full force across her body with her arm that was in the plaster cast. As Ruby yelped in pain at the ferocity of the blow and sunk to her knees, Johnnie jumped up and grabbed Maggie from behind in a bear hug to stop her doing any more damage. His long broad arms easily wrapped around her body, and he held her tight with both her arms in an iron clinch despite her screaming and kicking.
As he held her he whispered to her, ‘Ssshhh, ssshhh. Maggie, calm down …’
‘Get off me,’ she screamed and tried to kick backwards at his shins. ‘Get off me! You’re lying, you’re lying, you’re bloody well lying because you want everything, that’s all you ever wanted … Get your hands off me now …!’
‘When you calm down and promise not to hit anyone else, then I’ll let go, but not until then,’ Johnnie said, still clasping her tight.
But she carried on screaming and fighting against him until eventually she wore herself out and burst into tears. ‘It’
s not true, it’s not true …’
‘I’m afraid it is, Maggie, my dear. I’m afraid it is true. Barbara and George adopted you just after you were born.’ Herbert Smethurst had quietly come back into the room, and he stood in front of Maggie shaking his head.
Maggie looked at him, and in that instant she knew that what Ruby had told her was true. ‘They’d have told me. Mum would have told me …’ For the first time since she came round after the accident, Maggie started to cry. She sobbed so loud and hard, it sounded as if she was about to stop breathing; the combination of the events of the past weeks hit her in one and took her down.
As Johnnie released his grip, she moved away from the security of the sideboard and sat down as far away from Ruby and Johnnie as she could. Determined to stop crying, she leaned back on the chair, breathed in and out as deeply as she could and closed her eyes, trying her best to regain some sort of composure.
Herbert Smethurst went over and sat beside her. ‘Oh Maggie, your parents and I talked about it over the years, and they were going to tell you when they thought the time was right, when you were old enough to understand how it came about. But then this happened and it was too late … Now, shall we sit down and talk about this, or do you want me to come back another time?’
Maggie shook herself back to sanity. ‘No, let’s talk about it. I want to know everything, but I don’t want them here.’
‘Maggie, they have to be here.’
‘Well, tough. I want to talk to you, Mr Smethurst, just you. I want you to tell me everything you know.’
‘I can’t without Mr and Mrs Riordan – Ruby and Johnnie – also being present. Again, I’m sorry, but they are now your legal guardians, and …’ He looked from Ruby to Johnnie and then back to Maggie, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to continue. Maggie saw Ruby nod.
‘But I don’t want them here. I want to know about the will, and I want to know why I’ve got to go to Southend with them. I want to talk to you in private.’
Herbert Smethurst’s expression was kindly, his tone gentle as he spoke the words which would compound her tragedy and change sixteen-year-old Maggie Wheaton’s world forever.
‘They have to be here, my dear. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I have to.’ He paused and took Maggie’s hand in both of his. ‘Ruby and Johnnie are not only your guardians, but they are also your natural parents – your real mother and father.’
Six
Despite knowing that a happy ending couldn’t be possible, and despite being confident she would remain detached, Ruby Blakeley had fallen in love with her baby daughter as soon as she was born. Just looking at her as she lay swaddled in white, with eyes wide open and a knowing frown on her brow, had made Ruby’s heart swell with a love she could never have imagined.
Knowing that it would be an impossible task to bring up a baby in her circumstances, she had fought her feelings as best she could from that very first moment, but then when she had to feed her, bathe her, change her and care for her during her time on the maternity ward, it had been impossible not to fall for the little scrap she had given birth to.
Her own family had no idea of her predicament or even where she was, and Ruby had no intentions of letting them find out. Instead she was being supported by Babs and George Wheaton and his sister Leonora, who were all doing their best, but Ruby was worldly-wise enough to know her options were actually limited to just the one: adoption.
In 1946, sixteen-year-old single girls just didn’t get to keep their illegitimate babies.
Ruby knew she had been luckier than most pregnant, single young women in that she hadn’t been bundled off to one of the dreaded Mother and Baby Homes; instead she had gone to stay with Leonora Wheaton, who owned a small ‘ladies only’ hotel in Southend on the Essex coast. It was the best solution that could be found to the problem of a pregnant Ruby Blakeley.
She was tall and mature and looked older than her years, so it was feasible for her to be staying at the hotel as a relative of the owner, especially in the guise of a young war widow who had been left alone and pregnant when her service husband had been killed in the war. She saw out her pregnancy working at the hotel, and then, when the time came, Leonora Wheaton drove her to the local hospital to give birth.
Up until that moment Ruby had been focused on getting through her pregnancy and giving birth before moving on and getting her life back as soon as possible. But it hadn’t been as easy as she’d anticipated. The baby who had been unseen and unheard was suddenly a living breathing baby girl with the widest eyes and cupid bow lips.
Ruby had lain awake at night on the maternity ward wondering how she was going to survive giving up her baby. She was terrified; she couldn’t imagine simply handing her over to strangers who would take her away forever. Not wanting the hospital staff to discover her secret and treat her the same way they were treating her new friend Gracie, another single mother, she kept up the war widow pretext for as long as she could. Then, just as Ruby was about to approach the Hospital Almoner to ask for advice on adoption, the childless Wheatons had offered to take her baby and bring her up as their own back in the house in Melton.
It had been the perfect solution for everyone.
Because it would have been too hard any other way, Ruby then stayed in Southend at the hotel working for Leonora while George and Babs took the baby home with them to Melton. From then on Ruby had stayed involved on the periphery of her daughter’s life, but she was no longer her own baby’s mother. The Wheatons named her Margaret, immediately shortened to Maggie. They loved her as much as any parents had ever loved their child, and she was brought up thinking of Ruby as an elected big sister. When Ruby had reconciled with Maggie’s natural father, Johnnie Riordan, he had been welcomed and treated in the same way.
Everything had worked out as best it possibly could for everyone, with no one really giving any thought to the future and how they’d eventually have to tell Maggie the truth when she was old enough to understand.
But no one could have foreseen where they would find themselves sixteen years on from that time, when the daughter Ruby had loved from afar would have her heart smashed to pieces by the very people who had created her.
Maggie looked from Ruby to Johnnie to Herbert Smethurst several times as she tried to take in what they were telling her. She was backed up so tightly against the sideboard that she was leaning backwards, and with the three of them crowding so closely around her she was so scared that she couldn’t breathe. She started hyperventilating and feeling faint with vertigo; it was all too much for her.
She was adopted? Ruby and Johnnie were her birth parents? The questions were spinning round in her head, but she couldn’t think of a way to frame the words. It was all too surreal.
‘I didn’t want you to find out like this,’ Ruby sobbed as she reached out to her. ‘It’s too much on top of everything else, but the wills stated we had to tell you immediately if anything ever happened to both of them, so that you didn’t feel alone. They didn’t think it would ever happen, they didn’t, it was just a precaution …’
Johnnie put one arm around his wife and tried to put the other one around Maggie, but she brushed him away and focused on Herbert Smethurst.
‘I was adopted by Mum and Dad from Ruby and Johnnie? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’
‘I am, my dear. It was the best thing for everyone at that time. Everyone did what they did for you, only for you …’
Maggie shifted her gaze. Her eyes were cold as she stared at Ruby first. ‘So you’re my mother – you gave birth to me?’ She looked at Johnnie. ‘And you’re my father?’
‘Yes, but George and Babs were your mum and dad. They wanted you and loved you,’ Ruby said, the words tumbling quickly.
‘So you didn’t want me …’
‘No, no, that’s not right. It’s a long story, and we will tell you everything. It wasn’t as simple as that.’
‘I don’t believe you. This is a trick to get your
hands on everything they owned,’ she said, but in the back of her mind little bells were starting to ring. Things started to fall into place: her parents’ attachment to Ruby, their insistence that she be there for every birthday, their fondness for the boys, especially Russell.
Russell.
‘Is Russell my brother?’ she asked quietly as the truth of her situation started to sink in.
‘Yes, he is, and Martin and Paul are your half brothers. We’re all your family, and you’re not going to be alone,’ Johnnie answered her.
She spun on her heel. ‘I hate you, all of you! You’re all lying bastards, and you’re not my fucking family; you never will be!’
And with that she was gone. She pushed her way past them all forcefully, pulled the door open and went out, slamming it as hard behind her, but they could still hear her shouting abuse back at them.
‘Maggie, come back here! Come back …’ Ruby called.
‘Leave her for a while. She has to take all of this in,’ Johnnie said, touching his wife’s arm gently. ‘She needs someone independent to talk to about this. Maybe we should ring one of her friends? Alison?’
‘I don’t know if she’ll want anyone to know … Let’s just give her half an hour and then we’ll go and try and explain some more. God, this is bloody awful,’ Ruby said angrily. ‘I can’t believe George and Babs put us in this position, making us tell her like this … We should have ignored their instructions. We should have—’
Johnnie shook his head. ‘But Mr Smethurst here couldn’t have ignored them. She had to be told. I don’t know what’s worse – finding yourself an orphan or finding a family you never knew you had.’
Ruby started pacing, a habit she had when things went wrong. Back and forth, while her husband and the solicitor just stood there.
‘She doesn’t have a clue who she is any more. Everything is upside down … I suppose there would never have been a right time to tell her, and she had to know at some time. I just anticipated Babs and George telling her, not us, and not like this.’
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