Mothers and Daughters

by Fleming, Leah

  When they got back to the hostel it was not the same. There was a new intake of mums-in-waiting, the place full to bursting. Miss Willow said it was all this pop music making girls loose and easy prey.

  She took one look at Connie’s baby and asked, ‘What are you calling her for now?’

  There was only one name in Connie’s head for this precious infant. ‘Anastasia … after her grandmother. It is the custom,’ she replied proudly.

  ‘That’s a handful for a tiny mite,’ was Miss Willow’s reply.

  ‘I think it’s a beautiful name,’ June offered, seeing the look on Connie’s face.

  ‘It was my mother’s name and her grandmother’s name before that. She’ll probably get called Anna for short,’ Connie said, suddenly feeling sick that it might not be her who would shorten it.

  June’s parents were coming to collect her. They had written to offer forgiveness. June was jumping with relief but Connie felt jealous. She’d like to think that Mama would have been like them but she couldn’t be sure of anyone else now, not even Diana, who had not visited. She was on her own.

  Sheila went home without Lorraine. Her mother would not relent and insisted she came home alone or else be out on the street. It was a tearful farewell when her fiancé came to collect her. She made one last trip back to Leeds with her baby and came back distraught. How could a mother do that to her child? Sheila’s plight was driving home to Connie now what a stigma being an unmarried mother was.

  Connie clung to her baby, trying to work out plans. She owed it to everyone to do something with her A levels, but Anastasia must come first. She deserved the best in the world, this bright-eyed, perfect creature. She must have a lovely home, a good education, with two parents to dote on her, not one who would be tired, resentful and hard up.

  All she could offer was second best. If she had married Neville things would be different, but that was not an option now. Not even ‘a breast full of milk’ as Rossetti’s hymn said. She might find a grotty bedsit and they’d live on love with no trimmings. It wasn’t enough. Love was about doing the best for your loved one, no matter what. The chaplain said if God could sacrifice his only son to die on the cross, he would give her the strength to give up her daughter into a loving home waiting to receive her even now.

  How could she not believe he was right? She was so racked with guilt and fear and shame, knowing she was too irresponsible to look after this little thing in her arms. At night she whipped herself with every reason why she was not worthy to keep her baby. But still she held out from signing those forms.

  Everyone was older, wiser, and slowly they were taking the decision out of her hands, gently, persistently wearing down her resolve to find a practical solution. In desperation she’d even written to Gran, begging her to reconsider. Now she was wavering, exhausted, and putty in their hands. Never had she felt so alone, so torn between what was right or wrong, selfish or noble, alone on a raft drowning in the crushing waves of arguments, pressed down from all sides. How could she not capsize?

  One glorious morning in June, when roses wafted their heady scent down the path, Connie took her own via dolorosa to the welfare office in town. The baby was in a borrowed carrycot, green canvas with a hood, topped with the blue check blanket, for mornings could be chilly. She’d made a woolly pompom toy for Anna to look at, and round the baby’s neck Connie put her own gold crucifix with the Greek cruciform shape, given to her on her confirmation years ago. Anna had to have something of her. The baby was dressed in a brand-new knitted pram suit, turquoise and white stripes, from a pattern borrowed from June. The colour suited her eyes, those aquamarine eyes. Everybody commented upon them, but no one was willing to take a picture of them. She still refused to sign the forms. She wouldn’t, not yet, not until she was sure.

  A woman in a tweed suit accompanied her, afraid that she might run off.

  ‘Can she keep her name? She must keep her name,’ Connie insisted to the assembled officials. ‘It is part of her heritage.’

  No one spoke.

  ‘And the gold cross?’ she pleaded, pointing, but they shook their heads.

  ‘It will be in her file for safekeeping. Baby must have a fresh start. You can have no say in her future. Perhaps one day she may request information. Perhaps not,’ said the social worker, ready to lift the carrycot.

  But Connie leaped up. ‘Let me hold my baby one more time,’ she cried, desperate now for every second to be an hour. ‘She will have loving parents?’ she asked, trying to be brave in the face of all this cold officialdom.

  ‘Of course. They’ve been waiting a long time,’ came the reply, and Connie guessed they were waiting somewhere in the building, ready to collect this unexpected treasure.

  ‘Can I walk her to them?’ she pleaded.

  ‘No,’ said the woman, restraining her. ‘There must be no contact for her sake. It only unsettles everyone … Say your goodbyes to baby here and I will take her to her new home.’

  ‘I must give her something so she knows how much I love her,’ Connie whispered, hardly able to breathe.

  ‘You have given her the gift of life and opportunity. That is enough.’ The woman lifted up the carrycot again. ‘You can keep this. It’s too warm for baby,’ she said. ‘You have all her other clothes for us,’ handing back the blanket as if to compensate for the bundle in her arms, picking up the baby’s bag. Then they edged through the door.

  ‘But I love her,’ Connie sobbed, blinded by terror and tears. ‘I can’t do this … I won’t.’

  She collapsed into the arms of the chaplain, who suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Her face was buried in the blanket, sniffing the sweetness of talcum and baby. She sobbed and sobbed until there were no more tears.

  ‘Time to go home, Connie.’

  She didn’t remember the journey back to Green End. All her friends had left and that night she heard her song on the radio again. ‘The colours of my love I give to you …’ Connie got up, packed her bags and left in the middle of the night, walking towards Leeds with the tune racing through her head. There was still time. She hadn’t signed those forms yet.

  Connie wakes on the bench. Every detail of that afternoon is scratched into her heart. How can a wrong thing be done for all the right reasons? Oh, for the wisdom of hindsight. If only she’d been strong instead of weak, determined instead of uncertain. If only she’d waited a little while longer, hung out for her rights. But that was then, this is now. The young ones have no idea what her generation went through. The past is a different country indeed.

  The minute her baby left her that was when she knew she’d done the wrong thing. All her life she’s searched for her, in her dreams, in prams outside shops, in clinics just in case there was a little sandy-haired baby called Anna with turquoise eyes who was born on the 25 May 1964.

  Every birthday for years afterwards, she lit a candle, sent a card for her file, telling her all her news and her address just in case … but no matter, there was never any reply or confirmation that her daughter ever received any information.

  For thirty years it was forbidden for her to make any approach once she signed those forms. All her rights were gone at a stroke of the pen. They wore her down. They wore her down until she signed away her hope, condemned to ache like this for the rest of her life. It never went away. It tore you apart, the void at the centre of her being, that hole in the heart where a little icon sits behind a burning candle.

  If only she had waited, if only she’d been strong enough to hold out those six long weeks, things might have been different. In the small hours of the night she prayed to her icon that they would be reunited one day. The blanket was all that was left to remind her, hidden, waiting. The flame at the heart of her never went out, not even in the darkest hours. There has to be a kernel of hope at the heart of things.

  PART III

  WIVES AND OTHER LOVERS

  22

  Dr Valium

  Esme walked through the door to a pile of mail on
the floor and the stale smell of an empty house. She’d been away for nearly a month, renting a room in a farmhouse outside Grange-over-Sands for a change of air, but the trip was over and all she had to show for it was a pile of washing. Welcome home! She sighed to herself, staring at the kitchen, as clean as she’d left it. She was getting used to her own company these days.

  Since the big falling out in the New Year, Lily and Levi had scarcely crossed her door; the occasional duty visit and polite chitchat about nothing. The business with Connie and Neville had split the family in two, and it hurt. Heaven preserve you from ungrateful children, she sighed again. After all she’d done for this family too.

  She’d been the only one to visit Ivy in that awful place with bars at the window and seen to her comforts when she got back home. Neville’s court case had knocked the stuffing out of his mother and she’d forbidden him to visit.

  Not a word of gratitude from any of them. Levi and Neville were expanding their business into the High Street without consulting her. Neville was on probation. He wasn’t speaking to her either.

  Only Susan bothered to come round, wheeling little Kim to give Joy a break. The christening had been a churchy affair and not a word from anyone about Connie, for whom Susan had stood proxy as godmother. Did you ever hear such a thing! Standing proxy for someone else who was supposed to be making vows on behalf of the baby. What was wrong with adult baptism when the kiddy was old enough to know its own mind? When she’d told them her view at the buffet lunch in Rene Gregson’s fancy parlour, everyone went silent and turned away.

  She was out of the loop, out of range for them to just pop in, and too proud to admit she was lonely and missing the hubbub of her errant children and their offspring. She’d not seen young Arthur for months. She was too proud to admit she might have made a big mistake in taking Ivy’s side in the quarrel.

  Last night she’d had such a strange dream. Freddie was standing at the top of the stairs at the Waverley. He was asking for his daughter. One minute it was him and he sort of merged into Connie, and then they stood side by side, identical. They kept opening and shutting doors, looking for something. She was frozen at the bottom of the stairs, unable to help, wanting to reach out to her dead son but her arms wouldn’t move. Worst of all, he kept glaring down at her as if she’d done something wrong, shaking his head, and she woke up all of a to-do … That look on his face was still there at the back of her eyes when she shut them.

  On the train coming home she kept thinking about Connie and if she’d had the baby. Lily would know, and Neville, but no one was saying anything important to her now.

  A quiet empty house, a house where nothing was messed up, no chatter but the wireless for company, no one to walk round the garden with sharing the view, this was what she’d returned to. A house without love and life and noise and bustle was a house, not a home. Poor Ivy lived like this in her empty little palace, peering out of the net curtains, her eyes dulled with drugs to help her nerves. Was this death sentence going to be her fate too?

  Oh, Redvers, what have I done? Could I have got it all wrong? What do I do now? she sighed, looking at his portrait for inspiration.

  Making a cup of tea with the milk left on the doorstep, she ferreted through the post; the usual bills, appointments, a few postcards and then the unmistakable handwriting of her granddaughter. She tore it open and went in search of her reading specs.

  Connie’s scrawl was always difficult to read but the letter was short, neat, almost a child’s writing.

  Dear Granny,

  This is to let you know I had a baby girl,

  called Anastasia, after Mama. I want to keep

  her but without a roof over our heads it will

  be impossible. They have suggested she is

  better off adopted and have given me six weeks

  to decide. I am begging you to reconsider what

  you said before. You are my last hope.

  Connie and Anna xx

  PS, send the reply to Green End,

  Rawnsworth, Nr Leeds.

  Esme took off her glasses, her heart thumping. It was a sign: first the dream and then the letter. The Lord was giving her a clear indication of His will. Then she noted the postmark. It was a month old already.

  Connie didn’t know how she had landed up at the hostel. All she could recall of that terrible night was walking for miles until dawn. She could have gone to Diana’s flat but there was no more energy left inside her to face anyone she knew. So she kept walking. Someone had found her lying in a doorway, her feet bleeding, bought her a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich and taken her to St George’s Crypt in the middle of the town where the tramps and homeless found beds and food. Everything was a blur of tears and weariness, as if she was sleepwalking through the day searching, searching prams and baby shops, parks and streets, just in case she’d find Anna.

  The mission found her a job selling ice cream in a park, handing dripping cones to sticky fingers – babies, children, parents, always searching their faces just in case. Days turned into weeks. Soon the summer holidays would be over and she could turn her mind to study, to filling in forms for a place somewhere, if only she could concentrate. Nothing mattered any more but putting one foot in front of the other.

  They found her digs off Clarendon Road, a squalid bedroom in a back-to-back house, but it was all she could afford, and close to the university if she ever got there. People like her didn’t deserve any better. When you break the rules you had to be punished and brought into line, she thought.

  She plucked up courage to take a bus to Green End to collect the rest of her things but no one she knew was there any longer, and everything had been sent back to Diana’s address. That’s when she knew she must face reality and go back to Grove Park once more. She looked in the cracked mirror at her reflection. Her hair was cropped into a bubble of curls after she caught nits, her skin blotchy and pale, with dark circles under her eyes. She wore baggy trousers and a man’s black T-shirt. No one bothered her in the street when she looked such a scruff. Her once-beautiful breasts had shrunk to nothing. She could pass for a boy.

  It took all her courage to knock on that door. Diana stood back at the sight of her.

  ‘Connie! Where have you been? We’ve been searching for you! I thought you’d gone home. Everyone’s so worried. Come in … Look at the state of you!’

  She wolfed down her first proper meal for weeks and Diana slid a letter onto the table. ‘This was readdressed here … from Grimbleton.’

  ‘Does everyone know now?’ she said, not looking up.

  ‘Only those who knew before … and those you’ve told yourself. Is that from who I think it is?’

  Connie nodded and took it into the spare room to read.

  Dear Connie,

  Thank you for letting me know you are

  safe. I have reconsidered my position in the

  light of your present circumstances. I feel it is

  my Christian duty to offer you and Baby a

  proper home. I did it for your mother and I

  will do it for you. Your father expects it from

  me. I cannot rest easy thinking that one of

  our next generation might not live among its

  own and we don’t give Winstanleys away.

  Come home.

  Grandma Esme

  Enclosed is your train fare.

  Connie froze, chilled to the core by those words. Only last month, faced with the prospect of a homeless future and a tiny baby in tow, she’d gone of her own accord to the welfare office to sign the forms of consent in the sixth week. She had hung out to the bitter end for just such news as this. Now it was too late. She had walked away from her daughter for good, surrendering any hope of them being together. Too late, Gran … Too late …

  That night she made her first attempt to end it all.

  She woke up in hospital with Diana looking down at her.

  ‘Oh, Connie … how could you do that to
us? It’s not the answer … taking my patients’ pills and swallowing them. I’m ashamed of you. What were you thinking of?’

  Connie turned her face to the wall. She wasn’t thinking anything at all. She just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up. The pain was too much to bear.

  ‘I’ve rung your aunt and they’ll be coming for you. I can’t take responsibility for you now … what a stupid thing to do! There will be other babies, happier times. You just have to put all this behind you. No use moping here. Better to go back to your family and make yourself useful.’

  Connie didn’t want to hear any of this. She just wanted to go to sleep. Her throat was raw from the stomach pump. The nurses didn’t look at her with sympathy. What did they know of how she was feeling? Diana was being tough for a reason, but Connie was too tired to listen to a lecture and now the Winstanleys would gang up on her too. Why weren’t they there when she really needed them?

  It was Auntie Lee and Uncle Pete who brought her home and deposited her at Gran’s house. Esme was fussing over her as if she was an invalid but no one asked anything about the baby or the adoption. The baby who never came home was a subject no one wanted to address. It was as if none of it had ever happened and now she must get on with her own life as a free agent. She slumped on the sofa and sunk herself into an old woman’s routine.

  She had no appetite, couldn’t be bothered to wash or go out much. Who was there to visit? Joy and her baby were the last people she wanted to see. Granny had a line of photos of little Kim on her sideboard, and there was a postcard from Rosa, who was on a ship bound for Australia.

  On trips to town she often saw grammar school girls in their gymslips and red blazers, full of confidence and the giggles. How she envied and resented them. She felt like tapping them on the shoulder to say: ‘Don’t bother with all those textbooks. Go out and enjoy yourselves now. Don’t bother with college, it just delays the journey from one life to another.’