by Anne Bennett
‘No, Father,’ Hannah said. ‘The only regret I have about this whole business is that I am not able to see or contact my daughter in any way.’
‘And why is that?’
‘Arthur forbids it.’
‘No, Hannah,’ Father Fitzgerald said. ‘Arthur cannot forbid that.’
‘Oh, but he can, Father,’ said Hannah. ‘Apparently, because Vic is my doctor, it was illegal for us to begin a relationship. Arthur threatened to report Vic if I tried to have any sort of contact with Angela.’
The priest could hardly credit it. He’d heard of such a rule, but to separate a mother from her child was an inhuman thing to do. ‘I’ll speak to him,’ he said.
‘No, Father,’ Hannah said. ‘Arthur is a vindictive and spiteful man. I don’t know how he’d react to the news that I’d even mentioned it to you. It might make things worse.’
‘So you’ll do nothing?’
‘That’s about the strength of it, Father,’ Hannah said. ‘I’ll do nothing because there is nothing I can do.’
She held on to her tears until she’d shown the priest out and then she cried brokenheartedly. Other people, besides the priest, showed their feelings openly too. Hannah got a very distressing letter from Elizabeth Banks, who’d obviously got totally the wrong idea of the state of their marriage from Arthur. The letter reduced her to tears and she thought of replying to it and putting her side, but Vic said it would do no good. ‘She will believe what Arthur has told her,’ he said. ‘Don’t stoop to trying to justify your actions. Believe me, my darling, she won’t be the last to castigate us and we must prepare ourselves for it.’
Many of Vic’s patients disapproved of what he had done and voted with their feet, leaving the practice before he had time to sell it. Hannah had not returned to work since that dreadful night she left Arthur, not that she could have appeared anyway with her face as battered as it had been. And yet she knew if any had seen it, a fair few would have said it served her right.
Instead, she moved into Gloria’s house in Grange Road and lived there alone, while Vic stayed above the surgery, which he was desperately trying to sell, so that he could establish himself in Grange Road in a new practice before the baby was born.
Once he was free of the practice, he moved into the room to the side of the house, which in Gloria’s day was used as the breakfast room for the guests. It was perfect for though it had a door into the hall of the house, there was another that led outside so it could be totally private. Hannah engaged a carpenter to partition the large room so that part of it was reception and a waiting room and the other was for Vic’s consulting room.
Vic worried at times that any one of his remaining patients, or those offended enough to transfer doctors knowing he was now living with Hannah, might do what Arthur threatened and tell the Medical Council of his association. If so, it would probably destroy him, but at least Arthur’s power over them both and his ban on Hannah seeing Angela would be null and void.
But, none of his remaining patients or neighbours reported Vic. They either didn’t know his relationship with Hannah was illegal or weren’t that interested in reporting it. Nevertheless, he knew how they felt, for few patients followed him from his old practice in Wood End Lane. People, it seemed, were loath to consult a doctor who’d lured a woman from husband and child to live with him, especially as she was shamelessly carrying his baby.
It was soon made obvious that Vic’s parents thought that way too. Hannah and Vic went to see them together as soon as Hannah’s face was back to normal. Hannah was nervous of the meeting, aware that she wouldn’t appear much of a ‘catch’ for their son.
And she wasn’t and Vic’s mother Flo, who she was careful to address as Mrs Humphries, made it very apparent early on. It was obvious, too, in just a few seconds that his mother ruled not only the house, not only his father, Eric, but also his two colourless, browbeaten sisters, Betsy and Dorothy. They were both quite a few years older than Vic and already settled into spinster-hood.
Hannah felt sorry for them. She knew their lives would revolve around these four walls, bullied and dominated by their mother, with no possibility of escape.
She knew too she had to win Vic’s mother over if she was to fit into the family. She naturally said nothing about the baby she’d had in 1944, but did tell her about Angela. She didn’t discuss her marriage, other than to say that she and Arthur had decided to part and said her daughter had been left in the care of her husband, though she was away at boarding school most of the time. She didn’t explain why and Vic felt he shouldn’t interfere, though he saw his mother’s eyes widen in shock and disbelief and severe disapproval and knew that Hannah had blown it.
The whole visit after that was stiff and formal and the meal they sat down to was conducted almost in silence. Hannah was never asked to go there again. Vic was asked alone and though Hannah wanted him to go, he said he wouldn’t go anywhere she wasn’t welcome and refused. It was yet another nail in Hannah’s coffin, because Flo was convinced that Hannah was keeping her son away from her.
Hannah knew that Vic hated the separation from his parents. He knew he owed them a huge debt for supporting him through his studies that he’d never be able to repay. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered quite so much if his waiting room was full of people daily and he was too busy to worry overmuch about his parents’ reaction, but that wasn’t happening either.
Vic didn’t want to worry Hannah over these problems, but she was no fool and well aware of what Vic was going through in the practice. He’d engaged a part-time receptionist when Hannah’d left, but the girl was just that and Hannah still did the accounts and she knew how grim things were becoming.
‘Don’t worry,’ Vic would say, ‘we’re not on our beam ends yet. Once you have the decree absolute, we will marry. The gossip will die down eventually. It will be a nine day wonder, you’ll see.’
Hannah wasn’t totally convinced. Her new neighbours ignored her and not long after Vic moved in, she’d come face to face with some of her old neighbours from Erdington Village, Mary’s mother amongst them. They didn’t speak to her, but about her as they began to talk in loud voices saying it wasn’t right that decent people should have to mix with shameless hussies and harlots. Hannah turned away from her tormentors and one of them spat at her retreating back.
She never told Vic. He had worries of his own and anyway could do nothing about it, but ever after the incident she went into Birmingham city centre to do her shopping, which became very tiring as her pregnancy advanced. Meanwhile Vic, despite his reassuring words to Hannah, became increasingly concerned about their finances and took a part-time consulting job at Good Hope Hospital in nearby Sutton Coldfield.
Hannah was glad of Amy next door, who mainly kept her own counsel about Hannah’s behaviour, but she often remembered the things Gloria had mentioned and the rare times she’d seen Hannah with her husband and told her not to worry so much about people’s reactions. ‘They shouldn’t be so quick to judge,’ she said once. ‘Few know what goes on behind someone’s front door. But don’t fret, someone else will be doing something worse before long and a child is a great healer.’
In a boarding school in Leeds, a young girl cried herself to sleep one day in late June while Hannah was coping with hostility from all around her. It was her confirmation day, though she’d taken the beautiful white dress and lace veil off before she’d thrown herself face down on the bed and allowed the tears to fall. She was the only one in that school whose mother hadn’t come to her confirmation and after her promising, too. There were spiteful girls amongst her friends who said they doubted she even had a mother and Angela thought it might be preferable not having a mother at all, to having one that couldn’t be bothered with her.
She’d wondered for some time why she hadn’t had the weekly letter from her mother that she always looked forward to. She assumed she’d been too busy and intended to say a few sharp words about it when she came up for her confirmation. If he
r father didn’t go into a blue fizz any time her mother’s name was mentioned, she could have discussed it with him, but that she knew was out of the question.
But when she didn’t come on the day, Angela risked her father’s wrath to tearfully ask him why. ‘She’s moved out of the house to live with that doctor chap she worked for,’ he told her bluntly. ‘And she’s having his baby now. She won’t be bothering with you or me again.’
Angela’s mouth dropped open with shock. ‘What do you mean? Of course she will.’
‘Oh,’ Arthur said, looking around in an exaggerated way. ‘Is she here then after promising you she would be?’
‘You know she isn’t,’ Angela said and tears ran down her face as she added plaintively, ‘and she promised, promised faithfully.’
She needed to see her mother even more now after the dreadful things her father had said. Her Mommy couldn’t have moved out! She lived with them. All mothers lived with their children and she couldn’t be having another baby either. That would be … well, almost obscene, to think of her and the doctor … it was better not to think of it.
Arthur laughed humourlessly, breaking in on the thoughts jumbling about in Angela’s head. ‘Promises,’ he barked. ‘What does she care for promises? What about the promises she made me and in front of a priest, too? I tell you, she doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore, she’s made a new life for herself, and Josie doesn’t either. Both of them have made it quite plain. So we’ll just rub them out of our lives and never think of either of them again.’
But that wasn’t an easy thing for Angela to do. She wasn’t angry, just hurt, bitterly hurt and let down. She needed to know why her mother had done the things her daddy said she’d done. Surely she owed her some sort of explanation? She would write to her. She knew where she was, her father had told her she was living in Gloria’s house now.
But the letter was never sent. The nuns, by blocking the letter, were carrying out Arthur’s orders, which they fully agreed with. They could quite understand why he didn’t want his daughter to associate with his wife who they’d seen just the once and had marked down already as an unfeeling mother to never once visit her child, especially with her husband coming every week.
But now she’d gone one step further. She’d actually left her husband for another man, and as she was expecting this man’s child, she’d already committed adultery with him. Certainly, she was an immoral woman and not the example the father wanted for his daughter. But Arthur had warned them that her mother or her mother’s niece might write to Angela, attempting to turn her mind to accept immorality to be all right and purity and innocence to be scorned.
Oh yes, the nuns agreed. It was a daily fight against such things. If any letters like that came they would be handed to Arthur. And similarly, he said if Angela should write, for after all, bad as she is, she is the child’s mother. Oh, they assured him, such a letter written by Angela would not leave the convent.
The letter therefore that Angela wrote to Hannah was placed in her father’s hand on his weekend visit and when he opened it later, he felt the hurt and disappointment leaping from the page. He knew he’d been right to distance her from her mother who might have easily turned the child’s head. In time, she’d get over the pain.
But it took some time. Each day, when the letters were distributed, Angela expected a reply. Eventually, not understanding her mother’s silence, she wrote another letter, but it went the same way as the first and gradually anger and bitterness took the place of the hurt. ‘I hate her, hate her,’ she confided to Hillary. ‘If she was here now, I wouldn’t speak to her. I might spit in her eyes, but I wouldn’t speak to her.’
Hillary couldn’t blame her. Mothers didn’t just up and leave their families and live with other people. It didn’t happen. She’d always known there was something odd with Angela’s family.
Hannah still saw a lot of Josie, especially as Hannah’s time grew near, and she was glad of her for she was nervous about giving birth again and how she would react after it. ‘I haven’t got a good track record in caring for babies,’ she said to her once.
‘Oh for pity’s sake, Hannah.’
‘It’s all right for you,’ Hannah retorted. ‘What if it happens again?’
‘If what happens again?’ Josie asked, though she knew full well. Vic had told her that as the summer was coming to an end, the obsession Hannah had about getting depression again was affecting her sleep and she woke up crying and screaming in the bed quite often. ‘I’ve tried to reassure her,’ he said. ‘But to no avail. You have a go.’
So when Hannah said, ‘You know. What if I respond to this baby the way I did with Angela?’
‘Why on earth should you?’ Josie asked. ‘Have you spoken to Vic about it?’
‘Yes, he says that just because it happened once that’s not to say it will happen again.’
‘Well then?’
‘I’m still scared,’ Hannah said. ‘I don’t think I could go through that again.’
‘Oh God, Hannah, you won’t have to,’ Josie said, putting an arm about her shoulders. ‘That other business was Arthur’s fault and the terrible time he gave you. If you hadn’t got away from him when you did, I think that you would have had a complete nervous collapse and that would have helped no one.’
‘I know I had to go,’ Hannah said. ‘Even if there hadn’t been Vic, I don’t think I could have stayed much longer. But, I never thought it would hurt so much not to be able to see Angela. I know she is away at boarding school and I see little of her anyway, but it’s hard to think she’s at home now, yards from me, and I cannot see her, talk to her, or contact her in any way.’
‘It’s the price you had to pay,’ Josie told her. ‘Vic had to give up things for you too. And don’t worry, Arthur won’t be able to hold on to Angela for ever,’ she said. ‘If he thinks he will, he’s in for a shock.’
Hannah knew Josie was right. Angela or no Angela, she couldn’t have stayed with Arthur and held on to her sanity. Arthur always made her feel worthless as a person and useless at everything she did. Vic had taught her to value and like herself. Tilly, too, had been a great comfort and Hannah’s great confidante from the time she’d met her again in Leeds and she’d poured out her feelings in the letter she sent when she wrote and told her she’d left Arthur. Tilly’s reply was swift:
Good for you and about bleeding time. Now stick to your guns and don’t go back to that sadistic bugger, not for anyone.
She couldn’t go back, the gate was firmly shut against her. She wrote and told Pauline too, though she didn’t go into details. Pauline had known how things had been between Arthur and Hannah for years and thought a split between them inevitable.
Martin and Siobhan were slightly shocked, though not terribly surprised, after talking to Arthur at the wedding. They’d known then that Hannah wasn’t happy and yet a Catholic marriage was for life. Josie had told them, for since the wedding they’d corresponded regularly with their little sister and she was delighted about that. She laid it on the line just the sort of man Arthur was and pulled no punches as Hannah might have done and also said in her opinion she had been a saint to put up with it for so long. After Josie’s letter, both Martin and Siobhan wrote Hannah letters of support and that meant a lot to her.
Vic had insisted that Hannah be booked into a small maternity hospital in Heathfield Road in Handsworth in plenty of time. The doctors checking her medical notes decided a Caesarean section was advisable. Vic agreed, but was more concerned that she didn’t sink into depression as she’d done after Angela’s birth. ‘I must be there when she wakes,’ he said. ‘And I wish every assistance be given to her should she wish to breast-feed.’
It was amazing, he thought, how being in the medical profession himself gave him such authority and how the nurses deferred to him. He waited restlessly outside the theatre one day in mid-September until it was over and he could sit beside Hannah.
When Hannah opened her eyes, it was t
o see Vic by her side holding a blanket-wrapped bundle in his arms. Though still a little tired, she asked the question all mothers ask. ‘What is it?’
‘A boy.’
‘A boy! I have a son,’ and then catching sight of Vic’s face amended it. ‘I mean, we have a son. Is he all right? Can I see him?’
‘He’s perfect and you can do more than see him,’ Vic told her, ‘you can feed him. He’s beginning to protest already.’ The words were scarcely out of Vic’s mouth before the baby began to flail in his arms and newborn wails filled the room.
‘Vic, I can’t feed him.’
‘Of course you can, as long as we’re careful about your stitches,’ Vic said reassuringly. ‘It wouldn’t be sensible for you to sit up yet, but with the help of pillows, I’m sure we’ll manage.’
And they did manage. Hannah looked down at her small son, his cries still, his eyes closed in contentment as he sucked, so that his auburn lashes lay in a crescent shape on his cheeks. His little snub nose was squashed up slightly and she lifted the tiny hands holding her breast with the even tinier nails, marvelling at him. Her son!
She felt the rush of love, as powerful as she’d felt for his half-brother Michael fifteen years before, for this child, that they’d decided to call Adam, amazingly was born on Michael’s birthday. Hannah didn’t know if she was pleased or not about that fact. She did know, however, that this child was worth everything that she and Vic had gone through. She looked across from the baby to Vic and saw his eyes were wet, glistening with unshed tears and full of love and concern for her, and she felt loved and cherished. ‘Oh, Vic, isn’t he just wonderful?’
‘He’s marvellous, darling, and so are you.’
‘You don’t regret anything?’
Vic kissed her nose. ‘The very idea! The only regret I have is that we didn’t come together earlier.’
‘Oh, Vic.’ He was essentially good this man of hers, Hannah decided, and she pulled his head down towards her and kissed him gently on his lips.