Mothers and Daughters

by Fleming, Leah

  Connie sat back, defeated by the brusque no-nonsense arguments. The home was a model of efficiency but where was the compassion? They must come and go by the due date, deposit and deliver their burden, and be dismissed to make way for others to follow.

  She must either take on the child or walk away. This was the terrible choice facing her. There would be no time to brood over options with meals to prepare, cleaning, laundry, check-ups, prayers over meals and enforced rests.

  For one brief minute Connie thought about packing her bags and catching the first train back to Grimbleton, and to hell with the lot of them. But she hadn’t the energy to budge.

  A cluster of young mums with babies talked about their birthings and their stitches and their imminent departure dates. Each of the rest was waiting to join their club, knowing full well their turn for the agony would come. They sat sipping afternoon tea in little huddles. It was like some bizarre boarding school full of bloated schoolgirls. Doreen gave her the lowdown on those in their dorm.

  ‘Evelyn went with a black man from Jamaica. She was in a school for delinquent girls but her mam might have her back. June’s a nurse, brainy like you. She’s going to keep her baby, if she can face her dad. Sheila’s engaged but her mam won’t let them marry until the baby is out of the way and adopted. No wedding, and no going back home if she keeps it. What can she do? She doesn’t want to fall out with her mum. So they don’t want anyone to know she’s in here.’

  ‘What about you?’ Connie said. Doreen was so young.

  ‘I got copped at the fairground. He works the dodgems for Pat Collins; here today and gone tomorrow. My brothers went after him but he vamoosed, didn’t he, leaving me up the duff.’

  It was easy talking to these girls, different though they all were. They were all in the same sorry mess. ‘I’m hoping to keep my baby,’ Connie explained.

  ‘Better you than me,’ Doreen replied, eyeing her pile of books. ‘Doesn’t all that book learning put wrinkles on your face?’

  Connie sat at the dinner table with June later that day. They were about the same age but plain-looking as June was, there was a silent strength and passion to her that reminded Connie of her heroine, Emily Brontë. Her parents were strict Plymouth Brethren. Hers was another sad tale of getting carried away by first love.

  ‘I thought he was the love of my life but he wasn’t ready to settle down. He was a medic and suggested I had an abortion. He was going to take me back in the middle of the night into theatre. He wanted one of his mates to give me a D and C. How could I get rid of a life? Now he’s seeing someone else.’

  Connie agreed it was a drastic option and she wouldn’t have had a clue how to go about it, not to mention that it was illegal. She’d just felt she had to see things through to the end like June, but then what?

  What a sorry bunch of sisters they were. But as the days went on they drew strength from each other, packing and unpacking their maternity cases: sanitary towels, maternity size; nappy pins; muslins; thin nighties; vests and bootees; hats and bonnets; talc and cod liver oil; pram suits and towels. Only the best for Connie’s baby would do and she’d been extravagant just to prove a point, using every pound Neville sent.

  But she realised how silly she’d been to bounce into a shop pretending she was married and buying the most expensive things just to make her feel better for a few minutes. Now she had nothing in her purse but change for phone calls.

  On Saturday night Connie was deep into Middlemarch, while June was reading Dr Spock’s childcare manual, quoting them bits from time to time. Evelyn was trying to knit a rainbow-coloured bonnet. Sheila was writing daily letters to her fiancé, begging him to run away to Gretna Green with their baby. Doreen had nothing prepared. Her mother called in from time to time, a worried little woman in a headscarf, holding a cigarette out in front of her as if to ward off the evil eye.

  Doreen liked going to the newsagent’s for sweets and magazines, but her legs were swelling and she found it difficult to move. Sometimes June and Connie took the chance to escape into the sunshine. June was full of plans for her baby. Connie couldn’t think so far ahead as if part of her brain was frozen with fear.

  There was a television allowed, but not on Sunday when they had to attend Calvary Church, morning and evening. It was torture, sitting on those hard pews with aching backs and heartburn, listening to some old man who loved the sound of his own voice. They sat upstairs in the old servants’ gallery like delinquents, ushered out before the last hymn so the Sunday School wouldn’t see their bulging shame. The weather was so warm they had few suitable clothes to wear but cotton print smocks over straining skirts.

  Once a week they were escorted to the maternity wing of the teaching hospital for the usual pre-birth check-ups. They sat with the other mums-to-be, who stared at their ringless fingers with silent pity in their eyes.

  ‘Mrs Winstanley?’ Connie looked up, thinking there was someone else with the name.

  ‘Mrs Constance Winstanley!’ Why were they calling her Mrs?

  ‘It’s only Miss Winstanley,’ she whispered to the nurse.

  ‘Not in here it isn’t,’ she snapped, palpitating the bump. ‘Head not engaged. Otherwise full term and a good size.’

  ‘Can I go now?’ Connie asked, feeling naked on the couch.

  ‘Down the corridor for blood pressure and urine and scales,’ the nurse ordered, not bothering to look at her.

  It was at this point, Evelyn, whose blood pressure was going through the roof and whose ankles were swollen, was admitted for an induction.

  ‘What’s an induction?’ asked Doreen, worriedly.

  ‘They put your feet in stirrups, snip your water bag and give you an enema and a pessary to get you going. Evelyn’s got signs of toxaemia and that can be dangerous,’ said June who was their fount of medical knowledge.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t asked,’ moaned Doreen.

  Next morning they heard that Evelyn had had a boy, six pounds twelve ounces.

  I hope by the time she comes back I’ll be well on the way myself, Connie thought.

  Sheila went next in the middle of the night, a week early, followed by Doreen, who had an emergency Caesarean.

  ‘Three down, two to go,’ Connie smiled to June. They’d had time to get to know each other and often escaped through a back garden gate into a snicket and walked in the summer evening to get some fresh air. June was terrified of telling her parents. They were very strict and had hopes of her becoming a medical missionary in Borneo.

  It was hard to explain to June why Connie refused to tell her friends what was happening to her. Perhaps she was too proud to admit she’d messed up and too proud to ask for help. She’d always been the good girl. She wanted them to think of her still as the clever Connie who’d flounced off to find fame and fortune with her boyfriend. None of those lies mattered now. She was going to face giving birth on her own in a strange place.

  Days later, even June deserted her. She’d had the runs and, being too shy to warn anyone, had locked herself in the bathroom. Then there were screams and a panic, and Miss Willow had climbed up the stepladder to get through the open window while an ambulance was called. Baby Matthew Brownley was born in the ambulance in a layby on the A65.

  Suddenly there was just Connie left waiting impatiently, absorbed in her George Eliot but missing the gang who’d become her confidantes. Evelyn returned with Errol, Sheila with Lorraine. Doreen’s twins, Donna and Darren, were kept in the hospital, being underweight and sick. Doreen never saw them again. Darren died and Donna went straight into a foster home. Still Connie’s bulge didn’t budge.

  Seeing the state of her new-found mates was worrying. There was too much time to brood and watch them struggling to nurse their babies and heal their stitches. She’d now been in Green End for nearly three weeks and it was becoming her world. When would it all end?

  21

  Lullabye

  ‘Get yourself on a number thirty-six bus, Connie. If that driver doesn’t
get you going, nothing will. He’s a right bone-shaker,’ Evelyn yelled, while little Errol was nuzzling her breast with relish. The poor girl winced every time she changed position on her rubber cushion.

  ‘Who would have told me that bliss is a salt bath? Fifty stitches and I can feel every one of them. I’m not letting no willy up there ever again,’ she winked. Despite her grumblings, Evelyn had taken to motherhood. A tribe of sisters called who took it in turns to juggle the tiny creature. She was going to go back to the detention centre for a few months while her family would look after her son.

  At Connie’s next examination the doctor gave her a rough internal that rattled her down to her toes, all to no avail. This lazy blighter was content to sit curled up. Doreen was sent home early and they clubbed together to send flowers for the tiny baby that didn’t survive. She was going to get a job in a woollen mill as soon as she was fifteen. They all hugged her tight and wished her well.

  ‘She’s one tough cookie,’ Sheila whispered. Doreen had never mentioned Donna once. But the stitches across her stomach told another story. Connie had heard her crying in the lavatory when she thought she was alone. She’d crept away, not wanting to disturb her private grief.

  When June came back with Matthew, she was amazed to find Connie still with the antenatals. She put her little boy in her arms and he smelled of warm sweet condensed milk. All their babies were different: Errol was chubby and squat; Lorraine was long, with no hair. Matthew looked sharp and alert like his mother. Connie wondered just what her baby would be like if and when it bothered to turn up.

  ‘I am not giving him up,’ June whispered. ‘I prayed with the chaplin and wrote to my parents in Halifax and told them the truth. I asked them to pray for guidance and to come and see their grandson. There’s a nursery at the hospital and I will try to get him in there, if I can. The Lord will find a way through,’ she smiled, her eyes shining with hope. June was radiant. Connie felt sick. If only she had her courage and faith …

  ‘It’s not fair,’ she cried. They were all through their ordeal and hers was still to come. She wanted to be back with them in the mother and baby room; she needed their support. It was funny how the world outside no longer existed. They were all cut off, cocooned behind the hedges of Green End.

  ‘Come and watch Benny Hill!’ shouted Sheila, and Connie shuffled down to join her on the sofa. They were all laughing. Benny Hill was silly and rude, so even Connie started to giggle and couldn’t stop. She was wetting herself with laughter, but the trickle soon became a warm flood that soaked her skirt and the seat, and she jumped up.

  ‘I’ve started! I’ve started!’ She was dancing around with relief.

  ‘Shut up.’ They were all glued to the screen. Connie crept up the stairs, leaving a trail of water, checking her bag, changing herself ready for the big showdown to begin.

  What was there to say about birthing a first baby? Every detail of that evening was imprinted on her mind. The Beatles music on the radio. The journey in the ambulance and back again, when she couldn’t produce a contraction worth measuring.

  She returned, deflated, lying awake, looking through the curtains into the night sky humming an annoying tune that stuck in her brain. Something must happen soon, so she had a bath, with Matron hovering behind the door but still nothing. They had shaved her pubic hair with a scratchy razor, and she felt naked and silly without that familiar tuft. ‘Hands, knees and bumpsey daisy.’ She was singing it to her bump.

  Matron suggested she took cod liver oil, and that she would give her an enema to hurry things along. Drinking the stuff was worse than everything else put together. She went through all that rigmarole and still not a contraction to show for it.

  ‘I’m afraid you will have to go back. You’re vulnerable to infection now your waters have broken. They’ll start you off if you don’t oblige.’

  So it was back in the ambulance once more, wheeled in a chair like an invalid, desperate for the loo. Then she was put in a sort of dentist’s chair and into the stirrups, feet in a sling, bottom to the air and the indignity of a line of gynaecology students examining her procedure.

  It was then, to her horror, she saw a familiar face in gown and mask, trying not to catch her eye. She was so embarrassed. Paul Jerviss stared and then looked away. Connie was mortified. It was then that she cried out, ‘Why won’t this bloody thing come out?’

  A dapper little man with a carnation in his buttonhole, obviously the consultant, felt around her. ‘Put Mother on a drip,’ he ordered.

  It was Paul who had to insert the needle into her hand. At least he had the grace to blush as he fumbled for the vein. ‘Sorry … I’ll try again.’

  ‘It’s OK. You have to practise on someone,’ she offered. What else were they to do but pretend neither knew the other?

  Within half an hour she wished she had not been in such a hurry to deliver, still trying to avoid the eye of Paul. This was the stuff of nightmares. Of all the hospitals in the North of England he’d ended up here!

  She had read the leaflets and listened to the girls’ tales of woe but nothing prepared her for the agony as the contractions ripped through her in waves. She cried out for Mama in long-forgotten Greek, screamed the place down until someone took pity on her cursing and swearing, sticking something into her thigh and she drifted away.

  Then it wore off and she struggled to gain some control of this vicelike grip of new pain burning its way out of her body. When the pushing began they heaved her onto her back.

  ‘Why do I have to push against gravity?’ she gasped.

  ‘So we catch the little devil without straining our backs,’ said a jolly midwife. ‘It won’t be long now.’

  She was a liar and Connie was tiring. A doctor came with a lamp on his head and ferreted for scissors and still that stupid song rang in her head. She hummed, trying to forget that it was Paul bending over her, encouraging her on with the pushing, Paul about to deliver her baby.

  ‘Just a snip,’ said the midwife, and Connie thought about poor Evelyn and her stitches. Why was she laughing and pushing? Then suddenly with another push and a gush and it was all over. Everyone fell silent, but Paul lifted the baby up to her and said, ‘It’s a girl!’

  She saw the tiny creature turn from puce to pink with a helmet of red hair and then it was whisked away in a towel.

  ‘What’s wrong? Why are you taking it? Paul, please. I want my baby!’ Connie screamed. ‘Give me my baby!’

  The midwife stood in the doorway for a moment, cradling the bundle. ‘We’re to take this one away …’ she whispered to the doctor on duty.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she heard Paul intervene. ‘Is it in her notes?’ Someone brought her card and there was a discussion. Connie was exhausted. But she had to see the baby again. Nothing was decided. How could they do this to her? ‘Oh, please, let me have my baby!’ There was further discussion in the corridor and then suddenly Paul brought the baby back. He smiled. ‘They got the wrong mother.’

  Connie fingered the tiny hands, her plump cheeks and loved what she saw. I have created this out of my own body. How beautiful she is, she sighed.

  The colours of my love I give to you.

  Then a terrible thought nagged at her. What was she going to do? She was wheeled into the postnatal ward where the nurses were brusque. Everyone could see the U on her notes, which meant she was unmarried.

  She was attempting to breast-feed when a nurse shoved a bottle in her hand. ‘Don’t start what you won’t finish!’ Connie wanted the ground to swallow her up. The other girls on the ward must think she was giving her baby away and she saw them looking at her with disgust.

  Connie tried to feed her baby but she was so tense and inexperienced. No one wanted to help her master it but she was going to try all the same. The baby struggled with the nipple, not latching on properly. Why did Evelyn and June find it so easy, and not her? Was the baby rejecting her too? She cried so much that she gave in to the bottle and the baby wolfed it down.

>   Visiting time was the worst as husbands shuffled onto the squeaking ward, armed with flowers and presents. The other girls spent all afternoon making themselves ready to hold court with their families. Connie pretended not to care and carried on with her George Eliot, pulling the curtains around her so as not to see the families worshipping their new arrival. She wrote to tell Diana the news and got a big card back by return and a promise to visit soon.

  She wanted to cuddle her baby all the time but they didn’t like them being handled except for feeds. Desperate to groom her and sniff her, cuddle her, she disobeyed instructions and they took the cot away, saying she would spoil the baby.

  They were on borrowed time, the two of them, days filled with feeds and nappies and rests. The other girls kept to themselves, sneaking off the ward for cigarettes and illicit wanders down the corridors. Connie wanted this time to go on for ever, but then the chaplain of Green End, the Revd Terry Anderton, came to talk things over with her about adoption.

  ‘Shall we pray about it?’ he offered when she said it was too soon for her to decide. He seemed a pleasant enough sort of priest, with big ears that stuck out like jug handles. She kept her eyes on his imperfection to distract from his words.

  ‘I am Greek Orthodox,’ Connie replied, hoping he’d leave.

  ‘God hears in every language,’ he smiled, but he didn’t pursue his arguments. She had earned a reprieve.