by Lynda Paige
* * *
‘This stew is lovely,’ said Solly.
Gem smiled, pleased. ‘Well, thankfully, the butcher isn’t against fairfolk patronising his shop and didn’t try and fob me off with an old piece of mutton, which some of them do. He gave me a nice cut from a fresh supply he’d just had in.’
‘Maybe he fancied you, Mam. You’re not a bad-looking woman. For your age, that is,’ piped up Jimmy through a forkful of food.
Solly shot a look at her. ‘That butcher better not have a fancy for you or he’ll have me to deal with.’
She chuckled. ‘I’ve only got eyes for you, husband dear. Anyway, I can assure you he has a very nice wife working with him in the shop. And, Jimmy, thanks for the compliment about me not being bad-looking but you could have left it at that and not reminded me that I am getting on. Food alright for you, Robbie? You’re a bit quieter than you usually are.’
‘Yeah, it’s fine, Mam, ta. I was just thinking of something that one of the gaff lads told me earlier.’
‘Oh, what’s that?’ his father asked him.
‘Well… just that some woman was asking him questions about Mam.’
Gem’s head shot up. ‘What woman was asking questions about me? What did she look like? And what sort of questions was she asking him?’
He shrugged. ‘Just how old you were and if he knew what town you came from. Jerry couldn’t tell her as he didn’t know that much about you as he only came to work for Grundy’s in April.’ He didn’t give his mother chance to quiz him further as he hurriedly forked the last bit of food into his mouth and scraped back his chair. ‘I’ve got to get back to work as I’ve not finished checking all the seat bolts are tight on the big wheel yet.’
‘Wait for me. I haven’t finished touching up the paint on the nose of one of the carousel horses,’ said Jimmy, he too gobbling down the remains of his meal and then hurriedly getting up.
‘You’d both better get a move on as it’s only an hour until we open.’ As the two boys left, Solly then turned to Gem. ‘So what’s with this woman asking questions about you?’
With a worried frown creasing her brow, she got up and began stacking dirty dishes. ‘I’m none the wiser than you are. All I can tell you is that I’ve seen a woman recently I thought was watching me. Three separate times in fact. I talked to Velda about it this morning and, until Robbie told us just now what he did, I thought I was being fanciful and she wasn’t really watching me at all. Now, I—’ She was cut short by a knock on the door. It was a loud rap, the short that was more of an angry summons than a polite tap. As she was already standing up, she automatically went to answer it.
She was surprised to find a young woman facing her, the same young woman who had just been the topic of her and Solly’s conversation. She was about the same height as Gem and slim, dressed very fashionably in a fine-knit crew-necked jumper in a baby pink colour that was tucked into a pair of black pants. An oatmeal-coloured box jacket was over the top and black pumps on her feet. Her dark brown hair was cut in an Audrey Hepburn urchin style, feathering around her pretty face. Gem judged her age to be around twenty-two or -three. ‘You!’ she exclaimed in surprise. ‘You’re the one I’ve seen watching me and, I’ve just learned, asking questions about me too.’
To Gem’s shock, the young woman rudely pushed past her and on into the van, where she spun to face her. In a tone of voice loaded with utter disgust for the person she was addressing, she spat, ‘Because I wanted to make sure I’d got the right woman before I confronted you.’
Gem recoiled, bemused. ‘Confront me over what?’
Solly was on his feet now and making his way over to the two women. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded of the young woman.
She fixed angry eyes on Gem and demanded, ‘You don’t recognise me? Nothing about me that seems familiar to you at all?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Should it? I’ve never met you before.’
She sardonically hissed, ‘Oh, haven’t you? You sure about that?’
Gem was becoming angry herself now at this young woman’s uninvited, rude intrusion into her home, at her offensive and sarcastic manner. ‘Listen, young lady, I have no idea who you are or why you’re here and I don’t appreciate your rudeness either…’
Before she could say any more, the other woman cried, ‘And I don’t appreciate being thrown away like a piece of garbage, like I was nothing. You have two sons and you kept them, didn’t you, so why not me?’
Gem gawped at her. ‘What! What on earth are you going on about?’
Solly spoke up. ‘I don’t know what your game is but I think you should go before I make you.’
She blared at him, ‘I’ll go as soon as I get answers.’
‘Answers to what?’
She smirked and hissed, ‘As if you didn’t know.’ Then, stabbing a finger in her chest, said, ‘Did you think you would hand me over and that would be it? You’d washed your hands of me and could forget and carry on like I had never existed. Well I did exist and I deserve to know why you did what you did.’
Gem was looking even more mystified. ‘Did what I did? she uttered, confused. Then, slowly, the realisation of who this woman was suddenly exploded inside her like a bomb blast. Her face paled ashen and her whole body sagged. She had believed her secret was safe, would never be exposed. She felt like the ground was opening up beneath her, that she was falling into a cavernous hole, the walls collapsing in on her as she tumbled downwards and was finding it difficult to breathe. She gasped for air before she cried, ‘Oh my God, you’re alive! But I was told you had died.’
‘Gem, what are you going on about?’ a bewildered Solly demanded as the young woman looked on, stunned, trying to digest what Gem had just claimed.
‘Oh, Solly, I never told you because I didn’t want to cause you the pain I knew it would.’
He stared at her before the truth hit him and he blurted, ‘You had a baby before we got married and you never told me?’
‘I agonised over it, Solly, but I felt it was best not to.’
‘Was it mine?’ he demanded.
‘Of course it was yours,’ she cried, insulted that he would even consider otherwise. ‘There has never been any other man in my life but you.’
‘He’s my father!’
They both spun their heads to look over at the young woman, momentarily having forgotten she was there.
‘Yes, he is.’
The woman glared at Solly for a moment whilst she digested this and then found her voice again. ‘What did you mean, you were told I was dead when I was born?’
‘I was. You died because the cord was around your neck and it strangled you.’ With no warning all Gem’s maternal feelings flooded to overwhelm her. She might not know this girl, had not known of her existence until moments ago, had not had a good-enough look at her yet to see anything of herself in her or of Solly either but, regardless, there was an all-consuming need for Gem to hold her in her arms. She wanted to tell her that although she had believed she had died at birth that, regardless, her love for her had never died, that she had mourned her loss every second of her life since. But now wasn’t the time. The girl was angry, confused, desperately needing to know the truth of why her mother hadn’t kept her. In her words, had thrown her away like she was garbage. Solly, too, she could tell, was also fighting with a mixture of emotions… outrage and mystification that his wife had given birth to their child yet never mentioned a word of it to him during their twenty-one years of marriage. She helplessly stared from one to the other, unsure where to start her explanations to them both to answer their individual questions. The only thing to do was to tell them both her story and vehemently hope it vindicated her in their eyes as to how this state of affairs had come about.
She made her way over to her armchair and sank down in it, tightly clasping her hands in her lap. Once she saw they both had seated themselves too, she took a deep breath and began. ‘I was thirteen at the time and, without my parents’ knowledg
e, I visited the fair one afternoon when it came to town. My parents were the very strict sort; they saw fairs as places of danger to a young girl like me so, unless I was accompanied by one of them or an adult at least, I was banned from going. My father owned his own business, making lenses for glasses. We lived in a gabled house in a good area of Harrogate and he could afford to send his three daughters to a private girls’ school. He was very proud of the fact that he was a Mason. My mother was on the local council, chairwoman of the local branch of the WVS and she did a lot of charity work too. Both my parents were very well thought of in our community.
‘I was their eldest child. I was not the sort of daughter that disobeyed my parents but I did have a rebellious streak and when my best friend suggested we sneak off to the fair behind both our parents’ backs, the excitement was too hard for me to resist.’ She paused for a moment and deeply sighed. ‘I wasn’t to know then that that decision would change my life for ever.
‘There are those that scoff at the notion of love at first sight, but I am living proof that it does exist. The instant I looked into Solly’s eyes as he helped strap me and my friend into one of the waltzer cars, it was like I was sitting on a cloud, blasts of fireworks exploding around me. Solly told me the same had happened to him when he saw me.’ Solly nodded his head as confirmation of her claim. ‘For the rest of the week we spent as much time as we could together. I felt no guilt in deceiving my parents; I was too much in love, too desperate to be with Solly to care about anything else. The last night before the fair moved on was terrible for both of us, knowing it would be a year before we saw each other again. One year felt like a million to us both. We knew it was so very wrong of us but, at the time, it felt so right that we made love together. When the fair went away and took Solly with it, it was like my life was on hold; nothing meant anything any more to me. I missed him so dreadfully. When he went away, part of me went with him. I was upset that I didn’t even have a photograph of him to look at and kiss each night before I went to sleep, I only had my memories of him to keep me going. I bought a calendar which I hid in my drawer in my bedside cabinet and, every night before I went to sleep, I would take it out and cross off the day.
‘It was so hard for me to appear my normal cheery self in front of my parents but I had to as the last thing I wanted was for them to question me as to why I was so down. I couldn’t tell them why or all hell would have broken loose; that I was mourning for a boy who worked at the fair. Of course I worried that Solly would meet someone else in the meantime and forget all about me. My friend didn’t hold back in reminding me that fairground boys were famed for being the love ’em and leave ’em type, so all I could hope was that I was right about him, that he’d meant what he had said to me; that he loved me and would be loyal to me during the year we were apart.
‘In my naivety of such things, I had no idea I was pregnant. It was my mother that told me. I had not long turned fourteen, a month before in fact. I can remember that day clearly. It was four months after the fair had moved on, early August, and I was in my bedroom with my mother sorting out clothes to take with us on our annual holiday to the Lake District. I had started my periods the year before and they were still not what you could call regular so the fact that I had missed a couple hadn’t worried me at all. I was trying on a dress, my mother telling me it had been big on me last year so should fit me well by now, but I couldn’t get it over my stomach. My mother tugged and pulled but she couldn’t either. Finally we gave up and as I stood in my underwear waiting for her to give me something else to try on, that was when she noticed the mound of my stomach. Having had three children herself, she knew a pregnant daughter when she saw one.
‘To say my mother was beside herself was putting it mildly. She didn’t rant and rave, she wasn’t the type, but you knew when she was angry and my mother was incensed. All she could think about was what the neighbours would say; how having one of her daughters have an illegitimate child would affect her and my father’s reputation as pillars of the community. When she forced me to tell her who the father was, well, her reaction was pure outrage. How could her well-bred daughter give herself to the likes of a gypsy? I tried to tell her that Solly was a showman. Showmen worked hard for their living and were honourable people, but she was having none of it. To her, people that travelled were the dregs of the earth. She tried to make me admit that Solly had forced himself on me; it was obvious that that would make things better for her somehow, rather than the fact that I had willingly given myself to him. But I wouldn’t, no matter how hard she tried. She told me not to even consider that she would allow me to keep the baby. As soon as it was born, it would be adopted. I was in a total state of shock, but as it slowly sank in that I was carrying a baby, even though I was very young, I wanted it so badly. A love grew right then for the life that you and I, Solly, had created that was growing inside me. I don’t know how I found the courage to stand up to my mother but I told her that this baby was mine and I was going to keep it. I said that I knew the baby’s father would stand by me and we would raise it together. All she said to me was, “If that’s the way you want it.” Well, I took that to mean that after all she had said that, as a mother herself, she accepted that I wanted to keep the baby and would support me and Solly raising it. Help us by way of some money to buy a van to live in at the fair, something like that. How stupid I was.’
She paused for a moment to wipe a tear from her eye before she went on. ‘But now I know she never had any intention of letting me keep my baby, as that was when she must have decided on her plan that she was going to arrange for it to be adopted and tell me that it had died. She forbade me to even attempt to get in touch with you, Solly, and tell you about this. I wanted to, believe me, desperately so. You had a right to know you were going to be a father and there was a hope in me that maybe your family would help us too. After all, the baby was their grandchild. But I had no idea where the fair was at the time or any idea how to find out, so I couldn’t let you know.
‘My father too was furious, he could hardly bring himself to look at me and he only talked to me when he couldn’t avoid it. I thought he would come round once his grandchild was born. They still went on holiday that year but I didn’t go with them. They told everyone that I had gone to stay with a sick spinster aunt to help nurse her and when the school term started I would attend a school nearby until my aunt had no need of my help any longer. Really though, I was with an old widow in a cottage in the country, miles from anywhere. My mother had found out that she made her living from looking after pregnant women who wanted the fact they were having a baby kept secret. She helped arrange adoptions too. But she had no reason to arrange one for me as I was keeping my baby and me and its father were going to raise it together.
‘My time with the woman wasn’t so bad. She was a kindly old biddy and she looked after me well. There was another woman there when I was too. She was older than me, in her twenties. She too was unmarried and her parents also didn’t want the stigma of having an illegitimate grandchild. So they did the same as my parents and arranged for her to stay out of sight and have the baby adopted. Eloise, that was her name, was happy about that as she didn’t want the baby. She had fallen pregnant after having too much to drink one night and couldn’t even remember the father’s name. She certainly didn’t want that one mistake to ruin her life. I couldn't understand how she could not want her baby and hoped for the baby's sake that she would change her mind when it was born. Whether she did I do not know as her baby was due after mine. We spent most of our time taking long walks in the countryside when the weather was fine and Mrs Lovitt taught me to knit so I could make a layette for my baby. We also helped with our share of the housework. To say I was content and looking forward to my baby arriving… well, I was. Very much so, because soon after the birth the fair was due back for its annual visit, Solly would be back, and we’d be a family together.’
To now realise that at the time she had been obliviously planning her f
uture life with her baby and Solly, that her mother had already made sure that was never going to happen, was causing Gem such great distress she was finding it difficult to carry on. Still, this was no time to break down as she had a story to finish that two people were not only desperate to hear, but had every right to.
She forced herself to continue, ‘As soon as it was apparent to Mrs Lovitt I was going into labour she sent for my mother. Although I know she was so cross with me for getting myself pregnant and especially over who I had by, and was also greatly annoyed by my defying her wish to have the baby adopted and raising it myself, she was very kind to me during my labour. She bathed my head, held my hand and spoke soothing words to me. Although I was in a great deal of pain, I do remember thinking at the time that this behaviour by her was most unusual as my mother is not at all the demonstrative type. This will sound extremely nasty of me, but I do wonder now if this was her way of helping the birth go smoothly as the parents that Mrs Lovitt had helped her find wouldn’t want a less-than-perfect baby and the last thing my mother wanted was that on her hands to deal with if they refused to take it for any reason.
‘The labour seemed to go on for ever to me but it only actually lasted another four hours after my mother arrived. As soon as the baby was born, I wanted to hold it, look into its face and tell it I loved it, but Mrs Lovitt immediately wrapped it tightly in a blanket and took it away. It was my mother that broke the news to me that the baby had been born dead from the cord wrapped around its neck.’ Gem could not help the tears that flooded then. ‘I was… oh, I can’t describe the pain of being told my baby was dead. It was utterly unbearable. I was absolutely inconsolable. I demanded to see the baby as I wanted to say my goodbyes to it, but my mother insisted it was best I didn’t. She wouldn’t tell me whether it was a boy or girl either, said it was better I didn’t know. She said the baby wasn’t meant to be and it was best for me now to put this behind me and get on with my life. When we went home I was to keep up the story that I had been away helping my sick aunt as, if the truth got out that I had had a baby at fourteen years of age and especially that the father was a fairground worker, others would make my life a misery. I’d be labelled a slut and the private school I was attending would not accept me back, nor would any other school take me either, and my education would suffer. My future would too.’