Author’s Note
Although Northern Girl is a work of fiction, it was inspired by the true story of how my parents met, and created a life together …
‘I was dancing with an officer when I first saw Tom [my mother, Madeleine, recounts]. He was making fun of me while he was with other girls, some even sitting on his knee. After a while, he managed to ask me to dance, and it all started from there.
Over the next few months we had a lovely time, and he came to see me every day. Sometimes he would go to a shop in the market place, where there was another girl. But I guess he must have preferred me.
Some months later after he was moved to Belgium I discovered that I was pregnant, and that was a terrible thing to happen in those days. It was such a worry for my family, as well as for me. (My sister Martine told me of the shocked and urgent whispers going around the village: “Have you heard about Madeleine Pelletier?”)
We had no idea how to contact Tom. Eventually Martine went to Lille to meet an officer of his detachment, a very nice man. But when Tom was contacted from Lille, he said that the baby couldn’t be his.
Sometime after that he was demobilized and he returned to England, where, I heard later, he was given a big, hero-style welcome-home party.
After Francine was born, my family and I managed to get Tom’s home address and we contacted him, to let him know that he had a lovely little girl. It must have been a huge shock for his family.
He then started to write, and eventually, when he saw his daughter, any doubts he’d had were dispelled. She was his, and in his heart he’d always known it. But what could a man who was just out of the army with no proper job give to a woman and a child who lived in France? The initial denial of his child had been a result of nothing more than poverty and fear.
Tom and I married in France. Before I went to live in England (the only option we had) Dominic, my brother, insisted on going before me, to check on where I would be living, and to meet Tom’s parents. When he arrived in Bishop Auckland he took the bus to Evenwood. By amazing coincidence he recognized two little criss-cross lines on the back of the neck of the person sitting in front of him. It was Tom.
After an emotional reunion, Tom and Dominic continued the five-mile bus journey together. It was a huge surprise for the family when they walked into Tom’s house but they couldn’t do enough for Dominic. Anyone who knew the Dawson family will know exactly what I mean. They were very warm and caring people.
I remember the day Francine and I arrived in Evenwood. It was very early in the morning, and the whole family had got out of bed very quickly. Rene, Jeannie, one of their aunties (Hilda), Hannah and Jack, all looking at us.
As I remember it now, the whole family seemed to be standing there just smiling at us. But I was too sad to smile.
Tom did not understand how hard it was for me when I arrived in England. I knew no one, and I couldn’t speak the language. We also had a little girl to look after and she was only one year old at the time. What if she fell ill? How would I speak to the doctor? How would I speak to anyone about anything? But Tom was young, and he didn’t realize what I had given up.
Little Jeannie wanted to take Francine to show her off to her friends, but I was afraid and reluctant to let my little girl go away from me. Everything was so new and so different here, and it took me a very, very long time to get used to this difficult way of life.’
*
After many years of heartache and almost unbearable homesickness Madeleine did get used to this way of life. And by looking at newspapers, listening to the radio and to people conversing, amazingly she conquered the language barrier.
Her yearly visits home to France, although very necessary to her, could also be detrimental, as she suffered such heart-wrenching pain each time she left her family to make the tearful journey back to the north-east of England. However, aware that without the warmth of Tom’s family she might not have coped at all, bit by bit she began to allow herself to embrace the cultural differences.
Two years after the birth of Francine, Madeleine found herself pregnant again, and returned to France. After the birth of their son, she journeyed back to the north-east of England, where she and Tom continued to bring up their two children until the early 1960s when, due to lack of building work in the north-east, she and her family moved south.
At eighty-three years old, Madeleine, who still retains her very attractive French accent, enjoys the loving affection of her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and, of course, the friends she has made over the years. And most surprisingly, she’s more at home now in this once alien country of England than in her homeland.
Sadly, Tom died some years ago.
Northern Girl Page 28