Different Genes

  Patricia didn’t hear her attacker, when he grabbed her from behind. She didn’t see his face as he threw her satchel and hockey stick across the churchyard. She only felt the heat of his breath while he pinned her frame to the ground with the full weight of his body. She scarcely had time to struggle, before he had tied her scarf over her mouth and lifted her school uniform. She tried in vain to kick out as he ripped open her inner clothing. He pushed her face violently, and she momentarily heard the noise of her head knocking with force against a headstone as he thrust himself inside her. She was discovered unconscious by the church warden half an hour later. The police said the rape was both experienced and vicious. Her assailant was never found.

  After two weeks of observation in hospital Patricia was sent home into her mother’s care. Cathy never spoke about the attack, but Patricia was not allowed to return to school. The GP advised three months of quiet recuperation. It was important for the scratches on her body and the swelling on her head to heal, and for Patricia to avoid questions from curious school friends. In the mid-1950s trauma was hidden and not openly discussed.

  “She’s young,” said the doctor, “And, in time, she will no doubt forget about it.”

  However, by February 1955 it was obvious that Patricia was pregnant. Cathy told Patricia that the growing baby inside her was the result of the attack. It was to be kept secret. Her Auntie Ruby and the doctor were the only other people who knew. Cathy told Patricia that everything would be better once the baby was born. She bought Patricia loose fitting dresses to try and disguise her condition, but, as she grew nearer to full term, Patricia was hidden from view. Neighbours assumed that the teenager was still recovering from her attack, and plans were put in hand to confine Patricia in a convent in nearby Chatham for her final month. The baby would be adopted, and Patricia would be allowed to resit her school year from the following September. No other option for the baby’s future care was ever considered. Despite her daughter’s status as a victim, Cathy felt the full shame of Patricia’s situation.

  In the early summer of 1955 Patricia was sent to the convent. Cathy tried not to imagine her daughter’s fear as the nuns supervised her labour. She wondered if Patricia would be allowed to hold her baby before the infant was whisked away to a nursery full of illegitimates. She knew that the nuns did not place a high value on the needs of their under-age mothers. She realised that her daughter’s rape would not result in any special treatment. Nevertheless, Cathy was overcome with shock when, two days later, the convent telephoned to inform Cathy that Patricia had died very suddenly from unexplained causes. They told Cathy that the attending doctor had suspected a brain clot caused by Patricia’s prior head injury, but the death certificate gave the cause of death as ‘childbirth’.

  Cathy caught the bus to the convent and demanded to see the baby.

  “This is a most unusual request, Mrs Makepiece. The child is already booked out for adoption. We will be asking you to sign the papers today.”

  “The child is my next of kin. I have a right to see her.”

  And the sister nodded to a junior nun who left the reception room and returned a few minutes later with a tiny infant tightly wrapped in a lace shawl. She placed the baby girl on Cathy’s lap. Cathy stroked the child’s cheek and placed her finger in the miniature hand. She watched the baby’s eyes as they tried to focus on her grandmother’s face. A likeness to Patricia was already evident, and Cathy’s overwhelming grief at the loss of her daughter lifted when she looked at her granddaughter.

  The two nuns exchanged glances. “The child has bad blood. She is the issue of a violent conception. She will need a very strict upbringing to help her to avoid the evil within her. We have found a suitable couple to take on the task.”

  “The child is my granddaughter. I am taking her home.”

  Eighteen

  Nana

  Cathy signed the release papers and emerged through the heavy wooden door of the convent with the baby in her arms. Once the sisters had seen the strength of Cathy’s resolve, they made no objection.

  Cathy held the tiny baby close, as she waited at the bus stop. The infant was beginning to turn her lips towards Cathy’s breast, and she hoped that the crying would wait until they reached Penhurst Crescent. Seemingly unused to bodily contact, the baby felt a new contentment in the heat of her grandmother’s body and chose not to cry. Once back on home territory, Cathy bought powdered milk, bottles, rubber teats and nappies on the walk back to their house in Penhurst Crescent. She laid the lace-wrapped baby in an empty drawer and boiled a saucepan of water in which to warm the milk. Sterilising the bottle would have to wait. Once separated from her grandmother, the child began to shriek.

  However, within five minutes the tiny child was purring with delight as she drew milk from the bottle into her mouth. For several days, Cathy and the baby remained incarcerated in isolation together. Cathy boiled the nappies daily and dried them in front of the gas fire. She cut up old pillow cases and sheets for bedding and spare clothes. She bathed the baby every evening and found some vaseline to smooth on her granddaughter’s skin. Eventually, she realised she would need to venture outside. How on earth would Cathy explain her new arrival to the neighbours, her family, the vicar? No one, except Cathy, the doctor and her cousin, Ruby, knew that Patricia had been pregnant. “Let them wonder,” said Cathy out loud. “I will say nothing. They will think the child is mine. I will call her Louise. It was Patricia’s middle name.”

  A week after baby Louise was installed in the family home in Rochester, Cathy’s neighbours watched Ruby arrive pushing a brand new pram filled with parcels to the front door of Cathy’s Victorian house. Two hours later, the two cousins emerged from the house dressed in black and climbed into a taxi with babe in arms.

  “That accounts for the closed curtains,” said a neighbour to her friend. There has been a bereavement. Patricia’s funeral had been speedily held by the nuns, even before Cathy had been informed of her daughter’s death. Patricia had been assigned no more privileges than any other young unmarried mother. She had been buried in a distant corner of the convent grounds which was reserved for the purpose. Cathy had nevertheless insisted on visiting the grave with Ruby and Louise. She wanted somewhere to take Louise regularly to be close to her mother’s resting place. It was made very clear by the nuns, however, that Cathy would not be a welcome visitor. This one and only entry to the convent grounds would be allowed for reflection and prayer. They led the cousins to Patricia’s resting place. The small stone heading was engraved with the two words ‘Patricia Makepiece’. Ruby held the baby as Cathy knelt by the grave. She then passed the child to her grandmother, and Ruby lowered herself towards the ground. She took a sharp penknife from her bag and secretly scratched a kiss as deeply as she could on the back of the stone. Tears rolled down her cheeks as the Sister of Mercy led them both out of the convent grounds and said they could not visit again.

  “We must not be seen to condone evil, Mrs Makepiece.”

  Cathy had always been reasonably close to her neighbours. The post-war community of spacious, privately-owned, and prestigious terraced houses was filled with ex-officers and their wives who understood each other’s backgrounds. Cathy was the only widow amongst them and tended to be regarded as slightly unusual due to her lack of interest in remarriage and her obsession with painting. Nevertheless, she had still chatted with other mothers at the school gate and been called upon to use her artistic flair to decorate cakes for birthday parties. When Patricia was withdrawn from school in 1954, neighbours simply assumed that Patricia was unwell from the attack. They brought gifts of flowers and home-made soup. However, they soon noticed that Cathy had changed. After the attack, she appeared cold and did not invite them into the house. The neighbours eventually stopped calling.

  Now, unexpectedly, there had been a funeral. Patricia had disappeared, and in her place was a pram filled with child. Cathy�
�s situation was a cause of continual whispered conversations and twitching curtains. The neighbours suspected that Ruby might not have been virtuous, and Cathy was covering up for her transgression.

  A week after Cathy visited the grave, the newly-appointed local vicar paid a call. He was invited in and offered tea and home-made cake. Cathy had never held religious figures in high esteem, but her encounter with the nuns had made her even more wary. She was determined to keep her secret.

  “I am told you have been recently bereaved, Mrs Makepiece.”

  “Sadly, yes, my daughter, Patricia, died of tuberculosis.”

  “The funeral was not local?”

  “Patricia was kept in isolation because of the risk of contagion. She was in the care of the Sisters of Mercy who arranged her funeral.”

  “My sincere condolences, Mrs Makepiece.” The vicar was new to the area and assumed that Cathy was Catholic. He had no reason to disbelieve her story. He walked over to the pram and regarded the sleeping baby. “She is beautiful, Mrs Makepiece. What is her name?”

  “Louise, my daughter’s name is Louise.”

  “Such a pretty name. Your husband must be so proud.”

  “I’m afraid I am a widow.”

  The vicar assumed that her husband had also died recently.

  “You have had such a sad time, Mrs Makepiece. I will remember you in my prayers.”

  Cathy smiled at her unintended deception, as the vicar left the house. The neighbours would, of course, notice that little Louise called her ‘mother’ by the name of “Nana”. Indeed, they did often discuss the child’s possible history behind Cathy’s back, but they did not share their many suspicions with the vicar. He was unmarried, so there was no vicar’s wife to take on one side and infect with whispered gossip.

  Nineteen

  Losing Louise

  Cathy was besotted with her granddaughter. With no husband to care for, and no allowances made by anyone, except Ruby, for her grief at the loss of her own daughter, Patricia, she clung to the baby for comfort. All her excess widow’s pension and all her energy was spent on her granddaughter. She ignored the current fashion of providing a pink and floral environment for a girl-child and painted the walls of one of her spare bedrooms, now a nursery, with farm animals, rainbows, and brightly coloured letters of the alphabet. She sang songs, read stories and watched with pleasure as Louise began to take notice. She took the pram to the park and chatted to the anonymous gatherings of young mothers. She soon realised that her Louise seemed advanced in comparison to most other babies and toddlers of a similar age. Louise walked at eleven months and was talking clearly in complex sentences before the age of two. Cathy showed two-year old Louise how to dip a paintbrush into a pot of brightly coloured paint and make lines on large sheets of paper. She taught the child how to push large stubby crayons in semi circles and create the very same rainbows, which Louise loved to see on the nursery wall. Cathy refused to employ a full-time nanny in her home for Louise, but she did employ a retired housekeeper, Mrs Phelps, who visited twice weekly to clean the kitchen, lounge and nursery. Mrs Phelps also adored Louise and allowed the toddler to help dust the tables and sweep the floor with her toy dustpan and brush. She patiently accepted the accidents, as Cathy began to teach Louise to go without nappies. By the age of two, Louise was completely dry. Cathy’s younger cousin, Ruby, visited often. She was several years junior to Cathy and still living with her own parents in South London. Being the oldest of seven children, Ruby was more than willing to escape to the quieter environment and 1950’s affluence of the house in Rochester. She understood children and their development, and was happy to help with Louise. She also felt privileged that Cathy had chosen to tell her Patricia’s secret, even before Louise had been born.

  “It’s amazing that Lou Lou is so confident with other adults, Auntie Cathy.” The childhood title of Auntie was still used. “I mean she doesn’t see a lot of different adults, does she?”

  “That child is loved,” interrupted Mrs Phelps, “Loved in every ounce of her little body. And them’s that’s loved, give love back, don’t they, little Louise?”

  Mrs Phelps lifted Louise up to her own eye level. “Say, ‘I love Nana’.”

  “I love Nana,” repeated Louise, and she blew an extravagant kiss towards Cathy as she had been taught by Mrs Phelps. The room erupted into laughter. There was no strict regime of fashionable rules in Louise’s early upbringing. She was reared with a combination of common sense discipline and unwavering love which gave the child both self-confidence and security. Louise’s natural affability was nurtured and rewarded. She was praised for giving affection and being kind to others. Subject to the inevitable self-centredness of a two-year old, Louise began to develop into an outward-looking and well-balanced human being.

  When Louise was two and a half, Cathy began to get frequent headaches. “I can hardly bear them,” she told her doctor, “and I keep forgetting things.”

  “What things?”

  “Shopping, peoples’ names, the ends of my sentences.”

  “We all do that, Mrs Makepiece, and it is tiring bringing up a child on your own. Louise has no father to help with discipline. Are you coping?”

  “Yes of course,” replied Cathy in irritation. She resented the idea that a man was needed in a house to enforce discipline. She resolved not to visit her doctor again. She would buy herself some more aspirin for her headaches.

  Ruby also began to notice her older cousin’s forgetfulness and resolved to visit more often. On one such visit, Cathy went out to the shops and confessed to Ruby that she had forgotten her way home. She had to ask for directions.

  “You really should go back to the doctor’s, Aunty Cathy.”

  “I will, if it happens again,” Cathy lied.

  Ruby was worried about her cousin, and decided to offer to come and stay for a month in early August as a belated celebration of Louise’s third birthday. She returned back home to South London to pack a larger bag and bring back some presents for Louise.

  It was late July 1958, two days after Louise’s third birthday. Mrs Phelps had taken a week’s leave, and Cathy and Louise were alone in the house. Just before teatime, Cathy realised there was no bread in the pantry. She walked out of the house to go shopping and forgot to take Louise with her. She wandered to the end of her road and wondered where she was. She saw a park in the distance, which looked familiar, and walked towards the large green space. Cathy sat down on a bench in the park to think. Eventually, darkness descended. The silhouettes of the trees began to send shadows across the grass.

  Louise had been playing at home in the nursery. Now feeling hungry, she slowly descended the stairs and called out for her Nana. There was no reply. She checked every room. Nana could not be found. It was getting darker, and Louise climbed on a chair to turn on the light switch. She walked into the kitchen and opened a cupboard. She found a packet of biscuits and placed it on the kitchen table. She found her cup, climbed on to her little step and carefully filled the cup with water from the tap. She sat at the table in the front room with the biscuits and the water. Two hours later, the electric meter ran out of money, and the house was plunged into darkness. Louise screamed out for Nana. She tried to move around but kept walking into furniture. She wondered if there were monsters approaching her through the blackness. She grabbed a cushion and hugged it for comfort. Eventually she lay on the floor and sobbed herself to sleep.

  Cathy sat on the bench in the park for several hours. She was discovered at 9.30 pm by the park keeper, as he checked for last-minute visitors before locking up. He noticed a smartly dressed lady sitting motionless on a distant bench. He approached cautiously.

  “You alright, Missus?”

  Cathy looked at the park keeper, “Of course, I’m alright.”

  “Well shouldn’t you be on your way home? I need to lock up, and it’s get
ting cold.”

  “Home, yes I need to go home.”

  Cathy stood up and started to walk further into the park. The park keeper followed her and turned her round. “You’re going the wrong way. This is the way out.”

  He led Cathy through the park gates and directed her to an external seat. He locked the gates and watched her from a distance. Eventually he returned to the bench.

  “Are you unwell? Can I ring someone for you? I could get you a taxi.”

  Cathy just stared into space.

  “Where do you live, love? I can’t just leave you here.”

  “I live with Louise.”

  “Shall I call Louise, then? Do you have the number?”

  “Louise is not allowed to answer the telephone.”

  The park keeper sat down beside her, unsure what to do. His office would be closed by now, and he didn’t know who to turn to.

  “Look, love, I’m going to try and find someone to help you. You stay sitting on this bench.”

  He walked to a nearby telephone box and dialled 999.

  “Emergency Services. Which service do you require?”

  “Well I’m not really sure. I’m the park keeper at Rochester Gardens. There’s this woman, nicely dressed, about my age, and she’s just staring into space. She won’t move.”

  “Is she ill? Or drunk?”

  “I don’t think so. She was talking to me, posh voice. She said she lived with someone called Louise, but she wouldn’t tell me where. I think she might have had a bang on the head. She seems to have forgotten her address.”