The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers (13 page)

‘I can’t bear it,’ she wept. ‘I just want to run away with him. I just want to pick him up and run and run and run. I can’t
bear
it!’

I wanted to comfort her, to say something that would make things better, but there
was
nothing. Instead, try as I might to stop it happening, my own eyes filled with tears.
‘I’ll write to you’ was all I could promise her. ‘We can be there for each other and meet up when we leave here.’ This just produced a fresh wave of sobs.

Sister Teresa appeared then, from the Reverend Mother’s office. She didn’t speak; she just glared at the two of us, clinging to each other. And her expression was clear: we had
brought this on ourselves. If we wanted sympathy, we had better look elsewhere.

Mary was next to leave, only a couple of days later. She had cried so much in the days preceding her departure that she was hollow-eyed and exhausted, and my heart ached for her. And then, all
too quickly, it was my turn.

The business of having my baby adopted had been settled a full six months earlier. It had been settled at the time of my relocation to June’s house, when I’d signed
on with the local GP’s practice. It was the GP who had put me in touch with the Social Welfare Department. As a Catholic, my details were then transferred to the Chelmsford Diocesan Moral
Welfare Association, a part of the Church that – as was obvious from their title – dealt with such morally sensitive matters. It was through this organisation that I was informed that
while, yes, I could go to the convent to have my baby away from the world’s disapproving gaze, it was on the understanding that the baby must be adopted.

I had also been given a long list of things to bring to the convent when my place there was confirmed. It was a list that included all the personal items I would need for myself and my
soon-to-be-born baby, together with the stipulation that every item be clearly and indelibly marked with the owner’s initials – in my case, AMB for Angela Margaret Brown.

The admission letter said nothing about what would happen on adoption day. I knew nothing, therefore, about the logistics of the adoption. I didn’t know when and where it would take place,
let alone whether I’d meet the adoptive parents. I didn’t give the details much thought; like almost all the girls once they’d given birth to their babies, the day of the adoption
was something I actively tried not to think about. I would find out soon enough, after all.

It was 11 January when I was called into the offices of the Reverend Mother. I had been in them only once since I’d arrived at the convent, to sign papers confirming that now Paul had been
born, I was still going to go ahead with the adoption. At that time it had felt a bit of a blur, but today it couldn’t have felt more real or more imminent. As the date of my leaving loomed,
I had a knot in my stomach that wouldn’t go away, and the sensation of a clock ticking furiously in my head. I seemed to spend half my time praying and the rest dreaming for a miracle, which
would mean I wouldn’t have to take that fateful journey.

‘You’re booked in for the sixteenth of January,’ the Reverend Mother told me crisply, her voice echoing in the high-ceilinged room. ‘We’ll be arranging for a car to
pick you up around two o’clock.’

I listened silently as she consulted some papers in front of her. ‘The car will take you to the Crusade of Rescue in London,’ she continued, ‘where your baby will meet his new
adoptive parents. And you’ll be leaving us, too, of course.’ She looked up from her paperwork and glanced at me at this point. ‘So you’ll need to pack your things the night
before. Is that understood?’

I nodded, unable to think of anything to say to her. It felt like I was standing before a gallows.

‘Oh, and take this,’ she said, handing me an envelope, in which I presumed would be the letter that had sealed my fate. ‘Hand it in to the Adoption Officer when you
arrive.’

I felt numb as I crossed the echoing space back to the door. But at least I remembered to thank her as I left.

My bag wasn’t too heavy in the end, as I’d given away a lot of what I’d brought with me. I left my maternity clothes – I knew a few of the pregnant
girls could do with them – as well as my bed sheets, and quite a few of Paul’s baby clothes. After being washed at high temperature in the convent laundry, many of his things were rough
and in poor condition. But the nappies and nighties, and the nicer items – the clothes and shawl Emmie had made, certainly – I had put to one side to go with him to his new home. I
didn’t know whether they would use them – perhaps not – but it was important to me that they should know that the baby they were adopting had been loved and much cherished. If
only in a small way, these things were evidence of that love.

I had already given my duster coat to John and Emmie when they’d come to visit, swapping it for something heavier and more suited to the winter, so I left the convent that morning looking
ostensibly like my old self, stylish in a black and white check coat with a fur-trimmed collar. Inside, however, I was a shell of my former self.

Every second of that day, till the allotted hour, had been a form of torture, a series of unbearable trials that caused waves of panic to wash over me. I had risen at 5.30, on 16 January, as I
normally did, for the first of the day’s feeds, my breath clouding in front of me as I left the icy dormitory and gusting in waves over little Paul as I struggled to change his nappy with
numb fingers, trying hard not to let my cold hands touch the warm skin of his pink tummy.

I fed him, almost on autopilot, then stumbled back up to bed, where I slept heavily after an understandably turbulent and wakeful night. I had been awake for most of it, praying relentlessly. My
prayers had become more desperate as all I could think to pray for was that somehow the adoption wouldn’t happen. I kept thinking that now I’d atoned for my sins surely God must have
felt I’d been punished enough, surely He didn’t mean for me to give up my baby? Surely something was going to happen between now and the appointed hour that would change the course of
events so I could keep Paul. It didn’t matter how irrational this was. I didn’t care. I kept praying over and over and over: please don’t take him from me . . . please let me keep
him . . . I’ll be a good mother . . . he needs me, he needs me . . . Over and over and over until I slept. And then I’d wake once more, and repeat it all again.

I woke up groggy and thick-headed for my first stint in the milk kitchen – which today, of course, would also be my second to last. Those tasks performed, it was time for me to give Paul
another feed, and to bathe him for the very last time. It would be the last chance for me to feel his tiny naked body against my skin, to clean him, to talc him, to gently rub zinc and castor oil
cream into his bottom. I lingered over every aspect of this familiar ritual, fighting back the tears that were blurring my vision, conscious of the other mothers’ silent understanding and
support.

I tried to commit every detail of him to my memory, knowing that by the time the images began to blur, he would have grown and changed almost beyond recognition. I soothed the redness of his
bottom that was the result of having to lie too long in rough towelling, urine-soaked nappies, and fretted anxiously about his unique little foibles and ways. How could anyone but me properly care
for him and love him? How could anyone else know him like I did?

With Paul now heavy-lidded and clearly ready for another sleep, I had to put him back in his cot and return to the milk kitchen, going through that other ritual – washing bottles,
sterilising them, changing the solution, cleaning the steriliser, wiping down the surfaces, washing the floor – in the same foggy daze as I had prepared the bottles earlier, till the gong for
lunch sounded, out in the hallway, at 1 p.m.

‘You should eat something,’ advised Carol, the sweet girl who’d looked after Paul on Boxing Day, gently placing a hand on my forearm as I joined the short lunch queue.
‘You don’t know when you’ll get another chance to eat, after all.’

‘I know. And I will,’ I remember answering to reassure her, placing a selection of items on my tray. To this day I have no memory of what they were or what I ate of them, though I do
remember pouring myself water from the big Duralit jug, glancing up at the dining-room clock, which read 1.45, and realising I had mere minutes left.

Because the car was due at 2, I had to leave the dining room early, so I made the journey back to the nursery alone. I dressed Paul in the clothes I had brought specially for the purpose, all of
them marked, as was everything else, with that carefully inked AMB. I allowed myself to fantasise about the adoptive parents finding out my identity through them, and getting in touch with me to
tell me how my son was getting on. It was a faint hope to cling to. How could anything like that possibly happen? It would be the last thing they’d want, surely? But I clung to the idea
anyway, because it helped.

Paul was almost fully dressed when Linda joined me in the nursery. As she’d promised, she was clutching her black and white Polaroid camera. The Polaroid, back then, was a very newfangled
thing, which actually took photos
and
developed them all at once. She had kindly offered to take his picture for me, as she had for Mary. While I untied the blue weight chart from the bars
of his cot and slipped it into my bag, she took the photograph and pulled it out of the front of the camera.

We huddled close as the image started to develop out of the blackness. ‘Take good care of it, mind,’ she said as she handed it to me. ‘Or it’ll scratch. And don’t
put it in your bag until it’s completely dry, or it might stick itself to something and be ruined. Here,’ she said, tears welling in her eyes, ‘let me take it. You’ve little
Paul to hold, haven’t you?’

She carried my bag too, and together we made our way out into the hallway. I could see from a small window that the car had already arrived. At almost that exact moment, Sister Teresa appeared
from the dining room and called to me to hurry up.

Linda helped me, carrying my holdall out to the car, with me following behind, Paul in my arms. Our goodbye was tearful but hurried; even as we embraced, I could hear Sister Teresa telling her
to go back inside.

I got in the car then, still carefully clutching my baby and my damp photo. My last view of Loreto Convent was a glimpse of Sister Teresa’s swishing habit as the heavy wooden door closed
behind her. I hugged Paul tight to my chest as the car crunched over the gravel and away. The time for prayers was finally over.

My precious photo of Paul as a baby.

T
he offices of the Crusade of Rescue, the charity that had organised Paul’s adoption and were today going to carry it out, were based at 73
St Charles Square, in Ladbroke Grove, West London, and the journey, the driver told me, would take around an hour and a half. The full name of the organisation was even more emotive: written
properly, as it had been on the papers I’d signed for the Reverend Mother, it read ‘The Crusade of Rescue and Homes for Destitute Catholic Children’ – which said it all,
really. I had needed rescuing from mortal sin, and they were now about to do that, and my baby, nestled in my arms and sleeping peacefully, would surely have been destined to become destitute were
it not for their kind and timely intervention.

They meant well, I was sure, and had only the best of intentions. They were, after all, operating in a very different world to the one in which we live now: a world in which the contraceptive
pill wasn’t yet generally available and countless women risked their lives – and sometimes lost them – having crude backstreet abortions; anything was preferable to being pregnant
and unmarried, or married but pregnant by another man. For those girls for whom illegal abortion was not an option – girls like me, practising Catholics – the only alternative was to
give the baby up. And if that
was
your only option, which it mostly was, then it was important to be sure that the new parents would be people you could trust to do right by your child and
bring up him or her according to your faith.

Perhaps, my addled brain kept suggesting, they wouldn’t like him. Perhaps they would take against him, for some reason or other, and what was surely going to happen wouldn’t happen
after all.

But still we journeyed on, getting closer to our destination. I had no idea where in London we were going, what route we were taking, or what was going to happen when we got there. I felt as I
had during the latter stages of my pregnancy: unable to focus on the reality of what was happening, and drifting off and creating ridiculous scenarios in which my fate would be different.

I had prayed so hard, as I had never prayed before, to God and the Virgin Mary, to Jesus, St Anthony and St Teresa, pleading with all of them to show me some mercy and find another way for me to
pay for what I’d done. I didn’t care what. Nothing could hurt me more than separation from my son. Any fate, any punishment would have been preferable to this one. To have this baby,
my
baby, taken away from me would be an enduring punishment. I couldn’t see a future in which I would be healed of the pain. But my prayers had not been answered, so today I had to
give him up, and all I could do was try to bear it.