Birth
Caroline Joan
Megan
‘It’s not just morning sickness,’ Megan complained, ‘it’s morning, noon and night sickness.’
‘You look like you’re wasting away,’ Joan remarked drily.
‘G’wan.’ Megan was pleased with their new room-mate: older, more sophisticated, shorthand-typist no less. She had more about her than Caroline, who was kind but really shy and desperately unhappy.
‘And you should put your legs up,’ Joan instructed Caroline.
Caroline kicked off her shoes and carefully swung her legs round and on to the bed. There was little definition of the ankles left, the flesh was puffy and mottled red from calf to toe.
‘Does it hurt?’ Joan asked.
Caroline nodded. She looked tired, dark circles under her rich brown eyes. She had a wide face, a sallow complexion and wore her shiny dark-brown hair pulled back and tied in a ponytail.
Megan was brushing her hair. It had grown and she liked it long and bushy, springy red curls like Rita Hayworth. The brush wasn’t much good though, the soft bristles created more static electricity than anything else. Joan wore her black hair in a beehive, but hers was straight to begin with. She back-combed it and used sugar and water to set it. Joan was tall anyway, but with her hair up like that she looked even leggier, like some film star.
‘You should tell Matron,’ Megan said to Caroline.
‘I did.’
‘But it looks worse today.’ Megan told her. ‘They shouldn’t still have you doing the laundry, with feet fit to burst.’
‘Megan!’ Joan’s inky blue eyes narrowed in warning.
Megan shrugged and put her brush down. ‘Suppose it’s better than the kitchen though,’ she added. She foraged in her cupboard and came out with a knitting pattern and a pair of needles stuck into a ball of soft white wool. She rubbed the wool against her cheek. It was so soft. They’d lots of new stuff like this coming in, a million miles away from the scratchy wire that Mammy had used to knit all their stuff.
‘At least you can sit down to peel the vegetables,’ said Caroline. ‘I’m standing all the time in the laundry.’
Megan waved her needle at her. ‘If you’ve morning, noon and night sickness, the odour of cheese pie and liver stew tips the balance. And that’s not all that tips.’
The girls smiled.
‘What are you knitting?’ Joan asked.
‘The layette.’ Megan passed her the pattern. Black and white photographs of babies wearing the various outfits adorned the front cover. ‘White, of course, to suit a boy or girl and I’m doing the longer coat.’
‘I can’t knit,’ said Joan.
‘G’wan,’ said Megan, ‘everyone can knit. You can knit, can’t you, Caroline?’
‘A bit.’
‘It’s easy,’ said Megan. ‘How come your mammy never showed you?’
‘Oh, she did. I was always dropping stitches or getting the wool so tight I couldn’t budge it.’
‘Tell us about being a secretary. Was it hard at secretarial school?’
‘The shorthand’s the worst. And the teachers.’
‘Does it cost a lot?’
When Joan told her, Megan thought she was kidding her for a moment. ‘Flippin’ ’eck,’ she said, ‘you can count me out.’ Then she had a thought. ‘Tell you what, I’ll teach you to knit and you teach me shorthand.’
‘What about the typing?’ Joan laughed. ‘I don’t want to learn knitting anyway.’
‘Suit yourself!’ Megan tossed back her hair, pretended to be offended. She began to knit, the needles clicking in a steady rhythm. ‘I’ll just have to go back to the factory.’
‘But you said you were getting married,’ Caroline said.
‘I am, as soon as I’m old enough. Daddy won’t give his permission. Anyway, Brendan’s got to do his apprenticeship and he’s not meant to get wed till he's done. We wanted to,’ she said to Joan, ‘we wanted to get married and keep the baby.’ Her hands stopped moving. She gripped the needles.
‘That’s not fair,’ said Joan.
Megan could feel Joan’s eyes on her but didn’t want to catch them. There were tears stinging in her head but she would not cry. ‘No,’ she said abruptly. ‘Who said life was fair? They had that wrong. Still –’ she forced practicality back into her voice, carefully wound the wool round the needle – ‘there’s no budging them and I can’t run off to Gretna Green the state I’m in, so it’s the best of a bad job.’ She slid the stitch over, drew the wool around for the next.
‘Lights out in ten minutes,’ a voice called, knuckles rapped on the door.
‘Are you going to see Matron?’ Joan asked Caroline.
‘I’ll see how it is in the morning, it’s usually better after a lie down.’
She was so young, Joan thought, just sixteen. A dark horse. Not like Megan, who chattered day and night. The two girls were the same age but Megan’s bright personality and her bubbly confidence made her seem older than Caroline.
It was Caroline who had first shown her round, leading her upstairs and into the bedroom. ‘That’s yours.’ Caroline had pointed to the bed at the end of the row. There were three in the room and a small cupboard at the side of each. In the furthest corner, in an alcove to the side of the window, there was a wardrobe.
‘How long have you been here?’ Joan had asked her.
‘A month.’
‘What’s it like?’
The girl shrugged. ‘Bit strict. It’s all right if you remember the rules.’
‘Who else shares?’
‘Megan, she’s at the end. She came last week.’
‘There’s not just three of us?’
‘No. There’s four rooms like this and a big dorm downstairs next to the nursery. You go down there after.’
The girl seemed shy, jiggling one leg as she talked, unable to look at Joan for long without glancing away. She was bonny, a big-boned girl with a broad face and large, chocolate-brown eyes that made you think of an animal; something trusting like a dog or calf.
‘I’ll unpack then.’ She was probably not expected to stop and natter.
The girl nodded. ‘Tea's at half past.’ She slipped out of the door.
Joan sat heavily on the edge of her bed and took a deep breath. She would be here until May, maybe June. The room had cream wallpaper with pink roses on, quite nice. At the doorway there was a holy-water holder, the cup of water at the feet of a small statuette of Our Lady. On the wall opposite the beds, a picture of Christ the Redeemer, arms flung wide in welcome.
With a sigh Joan turned and lifted her case on to the bed.
She put her underwear and nightdress in the small drawer in the bedside table and hung her second-best suit and two maternity frocks in the wardrobe. It smelt musty and she wondered how clean the other clothes were, a shabby dress and coat and a pinafore dress. She had a small vanity case with her as well as writing paper, stamps and envelopes, a prayer book and a rosary.
The three of them had been thrown together and in the days that followed she had come to enjoy Megan’s irrepressible spirit and to feel protective towards Caroline, who was so patently unhappy. Now they tended to sit upstairs even though they could have joined the other girls in the sitting room, where there was a fire and the wireless to listen to for an hour in the evening. As long as the Sisters regarded the programmes broadcast as acceptable for their charges.
They were all so different but here they were, hidden away in St Ann’s; good catholic girls gone bad. She got her nightdress out and changed quickly. There was no heating in the bedroom and it was a cold March night. Two more months, Joan told herself, and it will all be over.
Caroline
Her mother had brought her here. Getting the bus into Manchester and then out again south to the home. There was a place nearer them – St Monica’s – but her mam argued that it was too close.
‘Tongues’ll be tittle-tattling,’ she said. ‘This way no one will set eyes on you. We’ll say you’re visiting Dulcie in Sheffield, helping with the twins.’
Twins. Ran in families. Could she be having twins? Not one baby but two? It was all done and dusted according to her mam. After the first awful shock, when she’d seen Mam’s face go white as fish, her eyes hollow out with dismay.
‘Oh, Caroline,’ she’d said, and the gentle reproach was harder to bear than the harsh words that followed.
All the how could yous and this familys, the respectables and let us downs, the ruin and calamity. And she fancied after that that when her mam looked at her she saw dirt, a soiled creature. A disappointment. Her dad was told and when he came home and found her in the scullery he left the house. After that he ignored her most of the time and if he did have to speak it was with a cold sting in his words. She had lost his love overnight.
Caroline had wept to her mam and begged forgiveness but when talk turned practical and her mam started to organise her stay at St Ann’s, then a small fierce voice had winkled its way out.
‘I want to keep the baby,’ she cried.
‘Caroline, you can’t,’ her mam cried in horror, wheeling round from the lowered wooden creel where she was hanging the washing to dry. She seemed more shocked at this suggestion than she had been at the pregnancy in the first place.
‘Have you any idea . . .’ Mam broke off, speechless at her daughter’s folly, slapping the wet shirt in her hands on the table in frustration. ‘Where would you live? You couldn’t live here. Oh, no –’ she shook her head fiercely – ‘you can throw your own life away, you can condemn your baby to the most miserable existence, but you’ll not drag us down with you.’
‘I could get a room.’
‘Not with a baby,’ her mother snorted. ‘No one would have you. You’d end up beggin’ on the streets, or worse.’
‘l could work,’ she retorted.
‘And who would care for the baby?’
‘Well . . .’ She struggled for solutions. Was it so impossible?
She tugged at her nail, thinking desperately, tears soaking her cheeks.
‘Think of the child,’ her mam urged, ‘growing up a bastard.’ The word like a slap. ‘Is that what you want?’
‘Caroline –’ she put down the shirt, moved to put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders – ‘if you care for this baby you’ll want the best for it, a good home, a happy family. A future. You can’t give it that. There are people out there desperate for a little one. Good people. It’s the only way.’
She pulled away then, devastated. She didn’t go to her room but ran out the back and walked up the ridge that ran behind the house. She relished the cold wind that stung her eyes. Digging her nails deep into her palms she strode half-seeing, her nose running so she had to wipe at it every few yards. She went as far as the first outcrop of rocks, Little Craven, and sat in the dip in the weathered stone that the children called the armchair. Facing away from the hamlet and the city in the distance she let her eyes roam across the moors to the peaks beyond. The first snows had reached the tops and she fancied she could smell snow in the air in among the bitter tang of the heather. She sat there until dusk drifted down while the chimneys behind were all smoking and the sheep bleated more loudly. She watched the clouds darken to purple and heard the clatter of the train in the next valley.
She felt blank, empty. A slate wiped clean. Except she wasn’t clean. She was mucky. And no amount of scrubbing or soap or prayer or pleading would put things right.
She didn’t argue again and, when the time was right, before she started to show, her mam brought her to St Ann’s. She had to answer all the questions for the form and she never let on then that there was any other thought in her head but having the child adopted.
Joan
When Joan realised she was pregnant, her first thought was that now Duncan would have to leave his wife. But, of course, he could never divorce her, being Catholic, so he could never marry Joan. They would have to move away, go to London. There was always work in London. They could buy a ring, tell people they were married. Who was to know the difference? Unless they spotted the ‘Miss’ on her Family Allowance book. Would they even give her a book if she was an unmarried mother?
She finished her Blue Riband, put the paper in the tin that she brought her lunch in and leant back against the park bench, letting her eyes roam around the empty pathways. Only a few stolid dog-walkers passed her. The wind gusted and caught at her eyes, a cold wind from the east. There was talk of snow. Not many chose to eat by the boating lake at this time of year. That’s why she’d come here. He’d never do it. There wasn’t even any point in telling him about it. Damn! She swore, it was all so sordid. Snatched hours driving up on the moors with a picnic rug in the back or after work when he’d ask her to stay behind to finish some letters and they’d wait until Betty had tidied up the petty cash and washed the cups and put her hat and coat on and said ‘toodle-oo then’ as she invariably did.