Children in Her Shadow (36 page)

Edward married Sarah in her Catholic parish church before God, his family and friends on Saturday third of June nineteen fifty. The ceremony and the wedding breakfast that followed fulfilled the glittering expectations of Sarah. She had eventually secured the marriage she so dreamed of.

This young couple would now embark upon a future together that in their eyes could be lifted from the pages of a love story. But theirs was not a relationship built upon trust, openness and no secrets, theirs was one in which Edward’s natural instinct for secrecy and Sarah’s need to be the centre of his life would come into sharp conflict and shape theirs and his children’s lives forever.

From June nineteen fifty, to the summer of nineteen fifty two, Edward and Sarah lived the carefree lives of any newly married couple. They lived in Edward’s flat in Preston, they went to the cinema and they continued their love of ice skating and dancing. They also continued to take the children out of the children’s homes for short trips to the countryside but these were trips that increasingly for Maria and Robert, were with apparently well meaning strangers. For Charlotte, there were memories, distant images of happy times with her mother and her grandmother, but she was already astute enough to know that she must never allow these memories to surface.

Edward took a number of jobs over this period, always in engineering and always on the cutting edge of development and ideas. He moved slowly into more senior roles which offered him the prospect of being able buy a home where he could bring his children back together with him. Sarah always went along with Edward’s plans but for her, the longer that others could have the responsibility for the children’s upbringing the better. She was neither maternal nor practical around children and when she encountered them she tended to patronise them with her silly childish behaviour. But she was prepared to see their idyllic life change and share the responsibility for the upbringing of the children in order to support Edward, something few women of her age would contemplate.

In October of nineteen fifty two, having secured a good job in Morecambe, Edward and Sarah moved to a house in the suburbs of Lancaster. The arrangement they had with the owner who was actually trying to sell the property was that they would rent it for a period of three months with the option to buy it.

The property was a three bedroom semi detached, with a large living room and dining area and a small but adequate kitchen. The house was on the corner of the road which meant that, it also had a driveway and garage. The rear garden was particularly large and overlooked a green public space. This was very much a step up to upper middle class living for Edward and Sarah. By the January of nineteen fifty three they had purchased the house and began to slowly furnish it.

Whilst Edward was happy in his job in Morecambe, Sarah knew that she would need to work in order to help pay towards the mortgage costs and the increasingly expensive middle class lifestyle they had adopted. Edward had purchased a newer more reliable car to go to work and there was the need to budget for the expense of having the children come to live with them.

Sarah quickly found a job in Lancaster working as an assistant in a fashion shop and this was the turning point Edward would claim for considering bringing the children to live at the house. But in truth, the social services were exasperated by the years of prevarication and were now openly discussing a deadline for return of Edward’s children or their adoption.

At the age of six and having experienced a year in foster care and almost five years of institutionalised life Robert was the first to be brought out of the care of social services and the children’s home. In the July Sarah travelled by bus to Preston and collected Robert from the nuns at the door of the orphanage. Like a character from Dickens he stood there in short faded trousers and a shirt that was far too large. He wore calf length grey socks and a pair of sandals that were old and scuffed. Under his arm he carried a small box of personal items. Robert knew only that he was going to Daddy’s house with Sarah, who he now must call Mummy.

Prior to leaving the home his friends in the dormitory who looked on in envy as he packed his box teased him that he would be back within weeks. Such was the life for many of these boys that they were often returned by families who either couldn’t cope or who didn’t like the child they hoped to adopt.

Robert was settled into the small bedroom at the front of the house in Lancaster before it was the turn of Maria to be collected from the orphanage in Lancaster and taken to her new home. Two weeks later Charlotte was brought home and moved into the rear bedroom which she would share with Maria.

These early days living in a house were difficult for these three institutionalised children. Their lives had been ordered and directed with few freedoms to express personality or character. It was hard to change to a new regime and particularly to one where the children constantly felt they needed to gain the individual and collective approval of their new mother. Sarah fumbled her way through the following weeks until the children were placed into their schools for the new term and she could return to work.

The following years were difficult for the children who needed to adjust to living in a home where it became increasingly obvious that they were far from the priority of Edward and Sarah. The house became a place where they ate and slept but it was never a home.

Sarah could not abide having toys and play things in the house and these were all placed in the garage. She was also obsessed by order and tidiness and refused to allow the children into the house unless she or Edward was there. This resulted in the children retuning from school in the late afternoon and spending until six thirty in the garage no matter what the season or the weather.

Sarah simply could not cope with the emotional needs of the children and her coping strategy was to select one child at random sometimes for a day, sometimes for several days during which she would entertain that child’s needs to the complete exclusion of the other children. But the children were wise and wily and quickly realised that it was futile to attempt to change Sarah and her ways. They adopted a code of conduct between them and would often start the day by asking each other, “Who’s in favour today”.

Sarah was also engaged in an emotional battle with Edward to gain increasing access to his time and his attention. She would take a small insignificant issue and create a drama of it during which she would threaten to walk out on Edward who she would accuse of putting the children before her. She demanded time away from the children craving for the carefree life before the children.

Sarah insisted upon a strict Catholic upbringing with the family attending church every Sunday and on all Holy Days of Obligation. But when a new church was built about a mile away from where the family lived, Sarah insisted that Charlotte should walk the other children to that church whilst she and Edward went to the Cathedral as a couple. Sunday afternoons were generally spent travelling to Preston where Sarah’s sister and brother-in-law lived though occasionally they would visit Lancaster.

The home in Lancaster was rarely visited by any friends or work colleagues of Edward and Sarah. Their life and their past was a closely guarded secret from all but the very closest of family. The children rarely brought friends to the house because they recognised from what they saw in their friends homes that the Carmichael house was different and especially uninviting.

But for the children the summers were their time when they could be free to explore their surroundings together. Every day during the six week school holiday, the children would plan their next adventure. They each had a bicycle and their journeys of discovery would regularly start at eight or nine o’clock in the morning and not end sometimes until early evening. This little band of children would have gladdened the heart of Ruth had she been able to see the resourcefulness and the bond that existed between them.

Charlotte, Maria and Robert lived two distinct lives, the one when they were under the control and manipulation of Sarah and Edward and the other where they allowed their imagination and their youthful sprit to shape their lives. They were close and their acute interpretation of their parent’s complex relationship allowed them to compensate for the indifference and lack of love that came from Sarah and the disinterest that came from Edward.

These children were free spirits, bright, witty and resourceful and as they grew into adulthood these attributes defined them and shaped their characters. But they were also inquisitive and absorbed the unguarded comments of an adult or the deliberate slip of the tongue from Sarah when she was demanding more attention from Edward. Their parents always referred to their mother Ruth as being dead though the children secretly believed that there were many flaws to the story. But this was to be territory the children would only venture into when they were no longer living under the same roof as Sarah and Edward.

The children’s lives went in different directions once they left home. Each left the family home at the earliest possible moment. The three children were academically bright but each was directed away from going on to university by Edward though they were more than capable of this. Edward’s only interest when the three children left school was to see them get jobs and leave home. Each did just this in swift order.

But Ruth would be proud that despite the terrible direction their early lives had taken the children had gone on to fulfilling and happy lives.

Ruth’s family continued their vigil at the bedside of their dying mother who was now lucid for very short periods of time. She was weak and the family knew that the end was near.

And it was in this period of heightened emotion that there was a gentle knock on the front door on the morning of April fifth nineteen ninety four. Ruth’s youngest child, Daianne, slipped from her mother’s bedside, descended the stairs and answered the door to a smartly dressed, grey haired elderly woman who looked frail and unsteady as she rested uncomfortably on her walking stick. Daianne, noticed another, older lady slip quietly away from the doorstep and return to a large car that was parked directly outside the house. The elderly woman asked Daianne, “I wonder if I might speak with Ruth?”

Daianne explained that her mother was very ill and that the whole family was with her fearing the worst might happen very quickly. The woman was visibly shaken by what she heard and appeared to Daianne as though she might collapse. Daianne saw a tear slip down her pale face and that was followed by another and then another. Gently placing a hand on the lady’s shoulder Daianne asked, “I’m sorry; do you know my mother well?” The woman paused before replying, “Darling, I know your mother so well that I grieve as you do for a woman I love dearly.”

The old lady turned to leave and Daianne could see that she was about to speak but the evident shock and distress she felt rendered even a few words an impossibility. Daianne, who was now also weeping took the woman’s arm and gently brought her into the hallway of her mother’s house. She took the stranger into the front room, sat her down in a chair and knelt at her feet. As she did, she took the strangers hands into her own and gently held them as she looked into her intensely blue eyes that gave only a hint of the youthful beauty of this sick and grief stricken woman.

After a moment had passed and when the woman seemed slightly more composed, Daianne asked, “I can see the news about my mother is deeply distressing to you, how long have you known her?” “My dear” she said, revealing a faint Cardiff accent, “My dear I have known Ruth since we were both young girls when we worked together in Cardiff. We have remained dear friends through the long journey we both have taken in our very different lives. My name is Mary, Mary Morgan and I too am facing the final Chapter in my life. I have only weeks, perhaps a month or so to live and because of this, I wanted to say a final farewell to my dear, dear Ruth.”

Mary explained that she and Ruth had lost touch over the years but as the aggressive nature of her cancer suggested that she would need to go into a hospice very soon she had set about trying to find Ruth. “It has taken Clarissa and me weeks to find your mother but I shall see out my own days in peace if I have a moment to say goodbye to my dear Ruth.”