The Sugar Girls

by Duncan Barrett

  Joan’s father, flabbergasted by the news that his 16-year-old daughter was pregnant, had been less willing to give up without a fight. ‘I’ll go round his parents’ and sort them out,’ he threatened. ‘They ought to make him do what’s right.’ But Joan begged him not to get involved. She liked Alfie’s family and was too ashamed to tell them what had happened if their own son hadn’t let them know. Besides, she had decided that if Alfie chose to get in touch then that was one thing, but she was not about to see him pressured into marrying her against his will. She had seen what an unhappy marriage looked like, and would do anything to avoid one for herself.

  At the time, such a principled stand was almost unheard of, but true to form Joan stood her ground. Eventually her father agreed not to press the issue, secretly rather relieved that he didn’t have to see his threats through. Alfie’s parents would remain blissfully unaware of the impending arrival of a grandchild, until such time as he chose to inform them of its existence.

  Joan’s spell as Miss Candy didn’t last long. As soon as her bump began to show, Mrs Cook decreed that it was no longer safe having her in the family home, where a neighbour could chance to catch a glimpse of her. Joan was packed off to her Great-Aunt Gert’s in Wanstead.

  Like Joan’s mother, Gertrude was a woman who enjoyed her airs and graces, insisting that Joan call her ‘Truda’ rather than Gert. The last thing the old lady wanted was for her neighbours to find out that she was sheltering an unmarried pregnant girl, so Joan had to hide out like a criminal, never daring to show her face beyond the front door. On the rare occasions when a visitor called, or when the postman knocked to deliver a parcel, she would have to retreat upstairs. Although her great-aunt’s house was huge, for Joan it still felt as suffocating as the pokey little candy stall.

  While she was there, Joan wore no new outfits – there would be little point since she never left the house. Her hair was no longer styled in the latest fashion, but hung lank down her back. She wore no make-up, since no one but her great-aunt ever got so much as a glimpse of her. She felt she would rather have spent a thousand weekends cooped up with her parents in their caravan than endure any more of this lonely existence.

  One afternoon, while her great-aunt had gone shopping, Joan slipped out of the back door. There was a spacious garden, with grass and flowers and even an old tree at the far end, and for Joan – who had been trapped within four walls for so long – it felt like paradise. She lay down on the grass, taking care not to trouble the baby, which by now was large enough to kick if a sudden movement or noise disturbed it, and watched the fluffy white clouds pass overhead.

  After a few blissful minutes, she saw something flicker out of the corner of her eye. Looking to the side, she could see the back windows of the next house along, and an unmistakable twitch from one of the curtains. Oh God, she thought, quickly getting up and hurrying back inside, doing her best to walk hunched over so that her bump was less pronounced.

  That evening at dinner, Joan didn’t dare mention her unauthorised excursion, but the next morning her great-aunt rushed up to her room in a state of agitation. ‘Joan!’ she whispered, ‘the lady next door’s seen something. You’re going to have to leave.’

  Joan merely nodded, resigned to whatever would happen next. ‘I’ve sent a message to your mum at the caravan,’ Gert continued, ‘and in the meantime Polly says she can take you in. You’d best pack your bags, there’ll be a cab arriving in a minute.’

  Joan was excited at the thought of seeing Nanny Polly again, although since her Auntie Iris had moved out the house in Canning Town had lost some of its appeal.

  True to form, her nan treated her with kindness and warmth, and that night Joan began to perk up again. At last she was back in her old neighbourhood.

  But first thing the next morning there was a knock on the door: her mother had arrived to move her on again. So great was her shame, it seemed, that no one would dare to be seen with her for more than five minutes.

  ‘I’ve found somewhere you can go to have the baby,’ Mrs Cook told her. ‘They’ll take you this afternoon, just so long as you’ve been checked out first by the Royal Northern Hospital. It’s in Holloway, so we’d better get going.’

  Holloway? Joan couldn’t believe it. That was miles away in North London – another world. She hadn’t heard much about it, beyond the fact that there was a women’s prison there.

  As they sat on the train together, Joan was struck by the thought that the next time she made this journey it would be on her way back home, after she had given birth. By then, she realised, the baby inside her now would no longer be hers. The subject of adoption had never actually been discussed, but it didn’t need to be. The idea of keeping the baby as an unmarried mother was unthinkable.

  When they got to the hospital, Mrs Cook whispered, ‘Here, put this on your finger,’ and slipped her own wedding ring into Joan’s hand. In the waiting room they took their seats opposite a pretty young girl sitting with her mother. The girl had short-cropped blonde hair and was sporting a gold band around her ring finger. Joan noticed that it looked as loose as the one on her own hand. I bet she’s just like me, she thought, grimly.

  Once Joan had been given the all-clear by the doctor, she and her mother made their way to the St Nicholas Home for Unmarried Mothers, just over a mile away. Number 31 Highbury Hill was a tall, semi-detached Victorian house, with dark ivy climbing up its walls.

  Joan gave the wedding ring back to her mother, and they said their goodbyes. Mrs Cook did not seem angry or unkind, but Joan didn’t sense any sympathy from her either as the nuns of the Crusade of Rescue came out and ushered her into the house.

  A kindly young Sister with an Irish accent took Joan’s bags and told her to follow her up the stairs. They climbed several flights to the top floor.

  There, they entered a room that had been converted into a little dormitory, with four beds, each with a small built-in cupboard next to it on the wall. Across the room, French windows led onto a wrought-iron balcony.

  ‘I’ll let you make yourself at home,’ said the Sister, putting Joan’s things on the bed furthest from the door. ‘Tea’s in the basement in an hour.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Joan said, returning her smile. When the woman had gone, she opened the French windows and stepped out onto the balcony.

  Joan breathed in the view. In the distance she could see Alexandra Palace, and below her a large garden that seemed to stretch a very long way. It really was a beautiful house, and bigger even than Great-Aunt Gert’s. Despite the circumstances, Joan decided she would force herself to make the most of her time here.

  An hour later, she ventured downstairs. As she crossed the ground-floor landing, she saw that the door to the front room was ajar, and inside she glimpsed a cosy sitting room with armchairs dotted around it. The door to the room behind it was closed, and a sign read: ‘Nursery’.

  I wonder why they need one of them, Joan thought, if we have to give up the babies.

  She carried on down to the basement and found herself in a large kitchen with several big tables, around which sat a dozen young girls, most of them visibly pregnant, and half a dozen nuns of varying ages.

  Joan slipped into a free chair. Opposite her was the pretty young blonde girl who had been waiting with her mother in the hospital.

  I knew it, Joan thought to herself, as they gave each other a shy smile of recognition.

  The blonde girl’s name was Lynne, and to Joan’s delight she turned out to be one of her room-mates. The other two in their dorm were named Mary and Pat, and as ever it wasn’t long before Joan was chatting away with the other girls and making them laugh. Pat, a chubby Irish girl who had been a nurse before she got pregnant, was particularly friendly, and Joan relished the company after her lonely spell at Great-Aunt Gert’s.

  When they went up to the sitting room after breakfast the next day, Joan was surprised to see some other girls from the home carrying babies into the room from the nursery next door, which t
hey cradled and cooed over as Joan and her friends sat chatting. Back up in the dorm, she asked Lynne why the infants were there.

  ‘Oh, didn’t they tell you?’ she replied. ‘They like the girls to breastfeed for at least six weeks before the adoption. It’s good for the babies.’

  Joan was thrilled. She had imagined that her child would be taken away as soon as it was born, but now it seemed she would get a brief chance to be a mother.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Lynne, ‘not all the girls are giving them up. Half of ’em change their minds after the birth, or their families do.’

  Joan was shocked. She had been under the impression that keeping the baby was not an option, but Lynne was right. Of the 33,000 illegitimate babies born every year at the time, well over half remained within the family. Girls’ parents would often claim that a new child was their own, hoping that their neighbours would accept what they told them. But Joan knew that there was no way her parents would take such a gamble, and risk the knowing stares and nosy questions of every busy-body in the neighbourhood.

  ‘What about you?’ asked Joan, looking at Lynne’s ring finger, which was now distinctly bare. ‘Don’t you have to give yours up?’

  ‘My mum says we’ll keep it no matter what,’ she replied breezily, ‘even if my boyfriend doesn’t ask me to marry him.’

  Despite the positive outlook Joan had managed to maintain, the words couldn’t help but sting. Might another solution have been available to her after all, if her own mother had been willing to help?

  When they weren’t chatting and giggling in the sitting room or around one of the tables in the kitchen, Joan and her new friends would often go out together for a stroll around Holloway. There was no need to stay hidden when they were so far away from anyone they knew, so they could wander the streets with impunity, and she soon found that it wasn’t the forbidding place she had expected.

  Joan’s favourite hangout was a pie-and-mash shop on the Holloway Road which reminded her of Mrs Olley’s on Rathbone Street, and she soon became a regular customer. ‘That baby’ll be born with a pimple on its nose, the amount of time you spend here!’ the proprietor would rib her.

  Her other favourite pastime was going to the pictures. The stylish Gaumont cinema at the corner of Tufnell Park Road was only a few minutes’ walk from the Royal Northern Hospital, and a short bus journey away from the home. Joan was in there almost every week with one or other of the girls, catching the latest releases. With female friends to go out with once again, she no longer felt so lonely seeing the queues of couples traipsing in together, and with no boy around she realised she actually got to see more of the film.

  But as their due dates drew near, the girls’ minds inevitably turned to the difficult decisions that lay ahead. One day, Joan and Pat were alone together in the dorm, when Pat suddenly asked, ‘Joan, can I tell you a secret?’

  Joan was sitting on her bed, staring out of the window, and quickly turned round. ‘Course you can. What is it?’

  Pat’s chubby face was contorted into an expression of deep concern. ‘It’s about my baby,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘Well, about its dad really.’

  ‘Is he a coloured chap?’ Joan asked instinctively.

  ‘Yeah,’ Pat exclaimed, surprised. ‘So do you think I should keep it?’

  ‘Well, so what if the baby’s black?’ said Joan. ‘I reckon you’ll love it just the same. If you could keep it as a white one, you should keep it as a black.’

  ‘Thanks, Joan,’ Pat said, looking more relaxed.

  ‘Joan?’ she asked, a few moments later. ‘Will you be its godmother?’

  Joan smiled. ‘Course I will,’ she replied.

  One night, Joan and her mates had just settled into their seats for the latest film at the Gaumont. ‘Here, is your chair wet?’ she asked one of the other girls.

  ‘No,’ the girl next to her replied, tucking into her popcorn.

  ‘I bet some filthy bugger’s gone and wee’d in it. Budge up, I’m not sitting here.’

  The girls all manoeuvred their hefty bellies out of their seats and moved up one.

  By now the curtains were open and the credits were beginning to roll. A man at the end of their row stared pointedly in their direction, urging them to keep quiet.

  ‘Better?’ Joan’s friend asked her, as she sat down again.

  ‘I don’t know. This one feels damp an’ all.’ Cautiously, Joan put her hand down to investigate.

  On screen the film was starting, and the man at the end of the row shushed them loudly.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Joan, ‘I think I know what it is.’

  ‘You haven’t?’ The other girls all turned to her.

  ‘Will you keep quiet?’ the man demanded furiously.

  Joan ignored him. ‘Get me out of here,’ she yelled. ‘My waters have broken!’

  The delivery went remarkably well, and just a few hours later Joan was happily holding a baby boy in her arms. ‘I’m calling him Terrence,’ she told the midwife proudly, as he suckled at her breast. ‘Ain’t he gorgeous?’

  Over the course of the next few weeks, Joan and Terry spent almost every waking minute together, and every night he slept with her in her dorm. She had never thought of herself as the mumsy type, but caring for the baby turned out to be the most fun she had ever experienced. Sitting in the spacious front room with the other young mums, Joan felt more content than she could remember, and for once she had absolutely no desire to go outside and see the world.

  ‘You two look so happy together,’ one of the other girls told her, offering to take the baby’s picture with her camera. Later, when she saw the photo, Joan couldn’t believe that her doomed relationship with Alfie had created something quite so beautiful.

  Before long, Lynne had given birth too and was nursing her own baby. One day, a young man knocked on the door of 31 Highbury Hill asking for her. The girls were allowed to have visitors but they couldn’t bring them into the house, so she and the baby went out with him for a walk.

  When they returned a few hours later, she excitedly told the other girls the news. The man was her boyfriend, and after meeting the baby he had proposed. Lynne, whose mother had promised to stand by her even if she was abandoned, was going to be married after all.

  Joan gave her friend a big hug and told her how happy she was for her. But she couldn’t help wondering whether meeting his own baby might have a similar effect on Alfie.

  Although Joan and Alfie hadn’t spoken since she had discovered she was pregnant, he was, after all, the father, and she knew that her only chance of keeping Terry was if she was married. She still refused to put him under any pressure or make any demands on him herself, but what harm could it do to meet up?

  Joan wrote to her old friend Kathy and asked if she would come and visit her. When Kathy arrived, she took her for a walk up the Holloway Road.

  ‘I’ve got a favour to ask,’ she told her.

  ‘Oh yeah? What is it?’

  ‘Do you reckon you could get in touch with Alfie? I want him to come and visit me and Terry. See if that don’t change his mind.’

  ‘Course,’ Kathy told Joan, with a squeeze on the arm. ‘I can get a message to one of his mates. We can’t wait till you’re back home where you belong,’ she added. ‘This place is one hell of a trek.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Joan, ‘but it ain’t so bad as it looks.’

  Word arrived that Alfie had agreed to pay Joan a visit, and she excitedly began preparing for the big day. First she went out to a local tailor’s and ordered a smart new skirt suit. Then she headed over to the Jones Brothers department store on the Holloway Road and splashed out on a bit of new make-up. She was determined to look as good as she possibly could, so that Alfie couldn’t help but pop the question.

  When the appointed day finally arrived, Joan waited nervously in the front sitting room with her baby in her arms, peering out of the window until she saw Alfie approaching along the pavement. ‘Come on, Terry,’ she whispered,
‘it’s time for you to meet your daddy.’

  She strode out of the grand front door of the Crusade of Rescue, feeling like a million dollars in her new outfit. ‘Alfie!’ she called, hurrying down the steps to meet him with Terry in her arms.

  ‘Hello, Joan,’ he said, giving her a peck on the cheek.

  Joan held the baby up to him. ‘This is Terry,’ she said.

  Alfie peered into his little face and stroked his cheek before standing up straight again. ‘Shall we go for a walk, then?’ he asked.

  One of the nuns brought a pram out for them and they wandered up to Highbury Fields. There, they saw men in white jumpers playing tennis, well-to-do ladies taking a stroll between the rows of trees and men walking their dogs around the green. Every so often they would pass a family spending the morning out together: mum and dad and a little baby or two. Joan smiled at them and they smiled back. I wonder if they can tell, she thought to herself. Or do they think the three of us are the same as them?

  They walked down as far as the Boer War memorial, and then turned and headed back up the hill. Alfie asked how Joan and her parents had been in the time since he had seen them last, and how her brother was getting on at school. He told her how things were in the Army, and how much he was looking forward to the end of his national service.

  But the question Joan was waiting for never passed his lips. There was no stopping suddenly and getting down on one knee, no urgent squeezing of her hand with a promise whispered into her ear. They chatted idly, wandered back to the home, and he departed, leaving everything just the same as it had been before.

  Joan was inconsolable. That night she cried herself to sleep, hugging her baby to her breast. The great plan had come to nothing – in spite of her efforts Alfie had remained obstinately silent, just as he had on the phone all those months before. Once again, that silence had killed all her hopes for the future. It had condemned her and Terry to part.

  A few days later, Kathy called the home to see how Joan was doing. ‘I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Alfie,’ she told her.