The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers

by Angela Patrick

  It seemed a guardian angel was looking out for me professionally as well. Since my father’s death and the end of my educational aspirations, I’d resigned myself to not having any sort of career; I fully expected that I would see out my days in the typing pool of some large conglomerate. Quite by chance, however, a neighbour approached my mother and asked her when I would be leaving secretarial college. It seemed her sister was retiring from her job very shortly, and was on the lookout for a new young replacement to train.

  The woman was a codes translator in a large City of London firm of importers and exporters called Guthrie and Co. It was a job that involved making sense of and compiling instructions in the vast array of complex codes that were used as a means of secure communication in the global shipping industry. And so it was that I was given the chance of a lifetime, and began what would turn out to be some of the happiest years of my life. I worked with two wonderful women, who remain lifelong friends; I had a wise and warm boss, who taught me so many new skills, and I couldn’t quite believe my good fortune. To be earning good money doing something I loved so much was icing on an already delicious cake.

  Yes, I was an innocent, but emerging into adulthood at the start of the 1960s, it seemed that the possibilities were endless. I had embarked on a career, I had my whole life ahead of me and I was determined that one day I would look like the glamorous and sophisticated women that I passed on the City streets each day.

  But look at me now, I thought, as I finished my second milk round and headed to the dining room for tea that afternoon. I still felt terrible about poor Louise, who’d been so cold and wet and ravenous when I’d done her second feed. I looked around for Ann, but it seemed she hadn’t returned yet; instead it was the usual sea of hollow-eyed girls. There were no sophisticated followers of fashion round the dining table in the Loreto Convent Mother and Baby Home, for sure – just a group of desperate young women who were paying the painful price of what, in every single case I heard, was not so much sinful as tragic, however much the nuns kept telling us otherwise.

  ‘So what’s your story?’ asked Linda, as we took our places at the table. Linda was one of the girls I’d recently befriended, who’d arrived at the convent the previous week. She was from Bradford, and was a ray of sunshine in the gloom, with a relentlessly positive and infectious personality.

  Our different duties were very isolating, as we tended to perform them alone, so I was glad of the chance to sit down and have a proper chat with her. I told her the bare bones of what had happened with Peter.

  ‘Bastard,’ was her considered reply.

  ‘And you?’ I asked, expecting something less terrible, somehow. That was silly though. She was here as well, wasn’t she?

  ‘Another bastard,’ she said. Then she leaned in towards me. ‘In fact, on balance, an even bigger one.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘What’s happened is that he’s married,’ she said.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I began. This was a depressingly common story.

  ‘Trust me, not half as sorry as I am,’ she finished. ‘I only found out two days ago!’

  I was shocked, and said so.

  ‘Me too,’ she went on. ‘Me too! I had no idea – not even an inkling. But, of course, now everything’s falling into place. I mean, I’m nineteen, he’s not much older, and we weren’t ready for marriage, or so I thought, so when he wanted me to have an abortion – and let me tell you, he really wanted me to have an abortion – it didn’t seem like anything unusual. I wasn’t going to have one, though. No way. I mean, you hear the stories, don’t you?’ She shuddered and pulled a face. ‘So I got everything organised, so I could, you know, get down here and have the baby. Got a job in London, so my mam wouldn’t find out anything about it. Jesus! The lies I tell her, God save my soul . . .’

  ‘So what happened?’ I asked her. ‘How did you find out he was married?’

  ‘When I called him on Wednesday,’ she told me. ‘Just this last Wednesday! Can you believe it? Anyway, you know, I called him just to have a chat, as you do. We’ve been speaking on the phone regularly. All the time, you know? All the way through this. And I thought – well, as you do – that however horrible this is, at least I had him to support me, to go back to. At least we could pick up where we left off, you know? But when I called on Wednesday . . . ’ I could sense the tone of her voice changing. ‘This woman answered, because he wasn’t there; he was out of the office or something. And she was like, “Oh, is that his wife?”’

  ‘Oh, that’s awful!’ I said, reaching instinctively to put an arm around her. But she flapped her hand.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Please don’t. No sympathy allowed. I’m okay so long as no one tries to give me a hug or anything. I’ll be okay . . .’ She gave me a wobbly smile. ‘I’m fine now. I’ll get over it. No bloody choice, have I? So,’ she said, picking up her cutlery with a clatter, ‘this looks delicious, doesn’t it?’ And she began eating.

  Linda wasn’t the only one who’d found out the hard way how unjust life could be. The other girl I’d befriended, a lovely eighteen year old from Cromer called Pauline, had also got pregnant by a long-term boyfriend, whom she’d loved, a young Italian boy called Alessandro. He was another student at the college where she was studying.

  Sadly, but also depressingly common, as soon as Pauline had told him she was pregnant, he wanted nothing more to do with her. He was only seventeen and he was terrified, she told me. His family back in Italy would have been horrified, plus he couldn’t face the prospect of being tied down with a baby at such a young age.

  And it was really that easy – for most of the boys, anyway. They could just walk away, disappear, wash their hands of the whole thing. It seemed desperately, horribly unfair.

  In some ways my situation was simpler than most girls’. My mother knew what had happened, which meant I didn’t have to lie to her. I also had a good job I’d been promised I could return to after the adoption and friends who would be there to support me. I was grateful that there weren’t complications with the baby’s father, as he had long since been out of the picture, happily oblivious to the consequence of our one night of folly. At least I didn’t have to deal with a broken heart on top of everything else.

  But in that respect I was painfully naive. I would soon experience true heartbreak.

  Chapter Six

  On 16 October I celebrated my twentieth birthday. The day was marked, as birthdays are, by a number of cards: one from my mother and stepfather, two more from my brothers and their families, plus a selection from those good friends and colleagues from Guthrie’s who knew that my extended sojourn in sunny Italy was a fabrication.

  I also received cards from Linda, Pauline and Mary, though the day itself was much like any other. The nuns were quick to discourage anything that might feel too ‘fun’, as being at odds with the tone of life in the convent and inappropriate, given the gravity of our situation and our need to pay penance for our sins.

  This birthday was something of a watershed: not quite the customary watershed of reaching the magic number twenty-one, with its freedoms and responsibilities, but one that nevertheless marked the end of my teens and being on the cusp of becoming a grown-up. Except I felt I’d already grown up too much, and another birthday was approaching that was so much more important than mine. It was now playing on my mind almost constantly. I knew the birth of my baby would mean much more than a new anniversary to go into the calendar; it would haunt me for ever.

  As the days following my birthday took me closer to my baby’s, things were getting more and more difficult physically. I already had some experience of this, albeit vicariously, as I’d seen several of the girls go into premature labour. The accepted view was that it was often caused by the gruelling work schedule and the sheer brute physicality of what we had to do each day. No lying around and resting with your feet up was allowed in Loreto Convent. Just as the elderly nuns worked their fingers to the bone, we girls were given n
o quarter for being heavily pregnant. Indeed, if anyone dared stop to rest their legs, they would be treated not only with disdain but with nastiness too.

  ‘Look at her, with her airs and graces!’ the nuns would say to each other, always within earshot. ‘What does she think this place is? A hotel?’

  As a girl from a convent school, I should have been used to it. But I never did get used to it. How could I? It seemed to me to be so unnecessarily unpleasant, and so at odds with the accepted idea of what giving your life to God – what being a nun – meant. Nuns were supposed to personify goodness. Wasn’t that how it was meant to be? So how could nuns – the living embodiment of kindness and selflessness – behave like such catty playground bullies?

  They seemed to delight in belittling us and scolding us, as if we were lesser human beings because we had not taken the same lofty path they had. So they worked us accordingly. We were expected to carry on with our duties as normal until the very point we went into labour. More than once I remember privately giving thanks for my assigned job; yes, it was lonely and involved being on my feet for long periods, but it was nothing compared to manning the huge laundry vats, or endlessly scrubbing already scrubbed floors on your knees. For all of us the punishing schedule felt like a form of atonement in itself. It seemed designed to ensure that every part of our experience of labour and motherhood etched indelible negative memories on our brains, so we would never do anything as wicked again.

  Births took place at St Margaret’s Hospital in Epping, three miles away, and our final antenatal appointments were scheduled to take place there, normally for a week or so before our due dates. As ever, we would travel to our appointments alone on the bus, most of us wearing our ‘wedding’ rings.

  Though things were becoming uncomfortable for me as the expected date loomed, I was showing no sign of going into labour any time soon. So when I arrived at my last scheduled antenatal appointment, the doctor examined me and told me to prepare to be induced.

  ‘Not much happening in there, by the looks of things,’ he told me. ‘So . . . let me see . . .’ he consulted a calendar on the wall. ‘If you haven’t had your baby by the tenth of November, we’ll induce you on . . . let me see . . . November twenty-fourth.’

  I sat there and nodded my understanding as he said this but I didn’t know what he was talking about. If I’d known almost nothing about babies and childbirth before my pregnancy, I still knew precious little even at this advanced stage, since my experience of pregnancy had been mostly one of covering up and pretending not to be. How could I have got any information? I’d had no opportunities to discuss things with other mothers. And I couldn’t ask my mother – who could have helped me so much – because, from the outset, she’d found it easier to avoid the subject at all costs. It was no wonder I’d arrived at the convent clueless.

  Since then, what little else I had picked up in the way of facts was of questionable use. Yes, I was developing some understanding of the process, but in such miserable circumstances it was no surprise that all it did was scare me witless. It didn’t help that when the girls returned from giving birth they invariably told stories of how horrible the nurses at the hospital had been to them.

  Apart from other girls’ horror stories, which I could hardly bring myself to listen to, no one in the convent told us anything. Where the nuns could, and perhaps should, have given us some advice on what might happen during labour, it was as if our situation was so shameful that it mustn’t be spoken of, let alone voluntarily brought up and discussed. All I was told, once my due date came and went, and the 24th loomed ever closer, was that I must pack a bag and telephone my mother to let her know what was going on. If nothing had happened by the 24th, then I’d be admitted to hospital and my labour would be induced.

  I duly phoned my mother, and it was as awkward a call as I’d known it would be. She sounded concerned, but she also seemed a lot more confident than I felt. It would be fine was all she kept saying. The nuns would look after me. And I really think she believed that, too. No wonder she felt calm: they would be taking good care of me. After all, why wouldn’t she think that? She was a devout Catholic and, along with devout Catholics everywhere, she knew that nuns represented all that was good: comfort and care in times of need. And, to her mind, they were experienced at looking after errant young mothers and their unfortunate offspring. My mother thought I was in the hands of professionals. And she certainly had no words of advice for me about the birth. She didn’t proffer any and I wouldn’t have asked her; it wasn’t the sort of thing we’d discuss.

  Generally, when girls went into labour, an ambulance was called to take them to hospital, but this would not be the case for me.

  ‘Right, Angela,’ Sister Teresa had told me the day before, bustling into the dining room at teatime with a file. ‘Your induction. If you don’t go into labour overnight, then you’ll have to go to hospital on the bus. I’ve checked the timetable and there’s one that should get you there in ample time . . .’

  ‘The bus?’ I had mostly been too scared to speak out since our telling-off in the common room, but I was so shocked the words just popped out.

  ‘Yes, the bus,’ she snapped. ‘How on earth else do you think you’re going to get there? They don’t just send ambulances willy-nilly, you know. And we certainly can’t be expected to use valuable funds on fripperies such as taxis, if that was what you were thinking, young lady.’

  I was stunned. I was almost forty-two weeks pregnant now. Huge. And what if something happened on the bus? What if my waters broke? I didn’t know much about anything to do with childbirth, but I’d been told about this particular aspect, in excruciating detail, only last week. Horrible scenarios began queuing for attention. Surely they couldn’t expect me to go all the way there by bus? It had been exhausting enough three weeks ago at my last antenatal appointment. This was inhuman, surely?

  Sister Teresa must have read my mind. ‘You know, Angela,’ she sniffed at me, ‘women all over the world give birth in the most difficult and appallingly unsanitary conditions every minute of every day, and you girls – all of you girls’ – she cast an eye around now, knowing full well that everyone else would be listening – ‘would do very well to remember that, and feel grateful that you have the support you do.’ She flipped her file closed. ‘So. Any questions? It leaves at 11.15 sharp.’

  And with that she swooshed out and closed the dining-room door behind her.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ said Pauline. ‘It’ll happen. I know it will. Come on, girls. Who wants to take bets on Angela going into labour tonight? Or, I know, perhaps we could do a rain dance or something!’

  There was a ripple of laughter, but it was feeble. Everyone was subdued now, and too busy cradling their own bumps. I could only hope Pauline was right.

  I lay awake till the small hours, trying to will my body into action, but when I woke up the next morning nothing had changed and I knew I would be making that journey to be induced as planned. How I envied Mary, who’d had her baby, Anthony, and been re-billeted in the mothers’ dormitory. I missed her. She had made it through the ordeal that still lay ahead for me, and I would have so loved to hear some words of reassurance from her.

  Eleven o’clock the following day saw me donning both my coat and a wedding ring – borrowed, this time, since my own was now too small to fit over my swollen finger – and walking alone to the bus stop with my overnight bag. It was like I was walking to my doom, waddling to the bus stop that Sunday morning. I was thankful that soon I would no longer feel like a whale, but it was scant compensation for everything else I was feeling.

  I was so scared; the sense of abandonment was overwhelming. It was all I could do to stop big tears of self-pity from spilling out and plopping down my front. Where was my mother right now? What was she doing? Was she thinking about me, as I stood shivering and frightened at the bus stop? Did she even care? That no one else cared could not have been made clearer.

  One thing I could rely on was tha
t the nurses would treat me as a pariah. Everyone had said so. We were considered to be the lowest of the low. Would they be nasty to me? Shout and make me cry?

  After a worrying journey, I was admitted to hospital at around 1.30 in the afternoon. I had some blood taken and filled in a long consent form, before I was taken to the maternity department to be induced. Hardly anyone spoke to me or proffered a reassuring smile. It was just go here, sign this, do that, sit down there, as if I were a package being processed.

  My mind was racing by now, wondering what ‘induced’ might mean in practice. Would it be an injection? A pill? Some invasive kind of internal procedure? I badly wanted to know but I didn’t dare make a nuisance of myself by asking, as it seemed the girls had been right: I was here on sufferance, and lucky to be considered human. And it seemed no one felt inclined to tell me anything, either.

  I was finally shown into a tiny room with nothing other than a bed in the middle of it.

  ‘There you are,’ said the nurse, pointing to a starched hospital gown that was folded at the end of the thin mattress. ‘Change into that, please. Everything off. I’ll be back to you shortly. Okay?’

  I did as she asked, feeling self-conscious about having the back flapping open, but I couldn’t reach to do up the ties. I then sat heavily on the bed, my feet throbbing by now, and waited, listening to intermittent sounds of anguish coming from adjacent rooms and corridors. I didn’t know what to do with myself.