Olive’s spoon stopped halfway to her mouth.
‘Peggy is quite an accomplished ballroom dancer.’
‘But you can’t dance.’
‘You’d be surprised. I’ve rather taken to it.’
‘Like grapefruit.’
But he only looked vague.
The post flopped through the letter box. Olive fetched it. There seemed little of interest other than what looked like an envelope containing tickets.
‘But I’m sorry … you still haven’t told me whatever it was.’
She did not want to tell him now.
Could she leave it?
Might she just never tell him?
‘I hope it isn’t a worry about your work?’
Unexpectedly, her father reached out and covered her hand with his.
‘You do know, don’t you, that your happiness comes before everything? If you don’t achieve top marks, what does that matter? It doesn’t, not to me. I am proud of you no matter what.’
And his warm, dry, familiar hand, comforting for as long as she could remember, pressed firmly, and at that moment she understood his love, and how he had never failed her, never reproached her, except for the very occasional chastisement for some offence when she was a child.
And so she told him.
He went very still. Something in his expression changed but she could not quite interpret it.
She had gone over every one of his possible responses, in her head, for days, had expected him to be, in turn, shocked, angry, accepting, delighted, emotional.
He did not look at her.
‘This would have killed your mother,’ he said. ‘She would have been devastated. She could never have borne it.’
How did he know that?
Of course he knew and he was right, but how was that of any importance?
There was silence, before he shook himself, out of thoughts that seemed to have taken him miles away from her.
When he spoke again, his tone was quite different.
‘So, I take it there is to be a wedding? Peggy will be delighted. Any excuse for a new outfit, it would seem.’
Peggy?
‘No.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘No wedding. I don’t want to marry Malcolm.’
‘But whatever else can you do? Please, please, Livi, don’t risk your health and … please don’t … you know what I mean.’
‘Get rid of it. I would never do that either.’
‘So dangerous. So dangerous. And illegal too, of course.’
‘Is it?’
‘Have you spoken to the college? Might they hold your place until – until afterwards?’
‘I haven’t told them.’
‘And Malcolm? Irresponsible he may be but he does have a right to a say in this.’
‘I haven’t told him.’
‘Then you must. Write to him tonight.’
‘No, I …’ She did not meet his eye.
‘Promise me that you will write to him.’
‘Yes.’
Olive got up. Everything she had vaguely hoped for from him had not come about, though what that was she could not have said. Understanding? Love?
‘Are you angry?’
‘Angry? No. I don’t think I am angry. Only shocked. And very disappointed. Worried. I hardly know what else to say.’
‘Perhaps Peggy will advise you,’ she said, and went out of the room. As she shut the door, she glanced back. Her father sat, staring at the breakfast debris. And then he reached for his cup and she saw that his hand shook.
15
DEAREST OLIVE
I do so hope that a letter from me at once will not prove unwelcome but of course Malcolm has told us his/your news, and although naturally somewhat startled at first, I confess that both Peter and I are really quite delighted. As you know only too well this has been such a bitterly hard time for us all and we could do with some joy. Naturally, no other child can ever replace our darling Penny – but I am sure neither of you would expect that. This new little life should not be burdened in advance with a weight of expectations. He – or she – must and will be separate and distinct and welcomed for its own sake.
Please come and stay here as soon as you possibly can so that we can talk about the wedding. We understand that you may well want to keep it very low-key under the circumstances, but we are allowed to anticipate a very happy day all the same. We are all so looking forward to welcoming you as Malcolm’s wife into our family, dear Olive.
With love and best wishes to you,
Moira (Crowley)
PS We have not yet told Belinda and Nigel and will be guided by you as to when you think it appropriate for us to do so.
16
THE SUN SHONE. That helped. How many people understood what a difference the sun made on a day like this. Days of death and funerals. Days of despair. The sun made life bearable, hope real, a future possible.
She thought that if she had come back here in rain and under billowing skies and with a sullen, churning sea she might have stood on the clifftop with her toes just over the edge until she overbalanced and fell.
But the sun shone.
ST JUDE’S
Under the Auspices of
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
MORAL WELFARE
She fumbled for her purse and tried to open the taxi door at the same time. The driver was surly, unshaven and with dandruff on his jacket collar like soap flakes, and he had not spoken a word to her all the way. But as she got out, he told her to keep her money.
‘You’ll need that,’ he said, ‘one way or another.’
She had not been able to look round as it was so far away, so now, she stood in the drive, looking at the home for the first time, as the sun touched the grey walls, and one or two faces peered out of upper windows, and were sunlit too, and the creeper was thick and dark, luscious green.
St Jude’s.
‘How do you do, Miss Piper?’
The handshake was rasping. Dry skin. Hard bones. But the matron smiled, seemingly also warmed by the sun.
‘In a few minutes you can go up to your room, but come in here first. We shall have a talk.’
Parents?
Age?
Education?
Father of the child?
‘Such a pity. You could be looking at a bright future. Well, perhaps … I am a firm believer in second chances, Miss Piper.’
Should she ask to be called Olive?
Previous pregnancies?
General health?
Obstetric health?
Plans?
Plans?
Apparently almost all the girls had the baby adopted. A very few wanted to keep it. ‘But that is a hard, hard road – a struggle, and you know, money has little to do with it.’
A cup of coffee was brought in, for the matron. Nothing for her.
‘Do you have anything to ask me? Anything at all?’
She did not, but for some reason blurted out that her father was paying, and for baby items, and giving her an allowance.
‘And will the baby’s father want to visit? And if so, before or after the birth?’
She lied that he had no interest in doing so.
Malcolm had begged to visit, begged her to marry him, begged to bring Peter and Moira when the baby was born.
‘No.’
The matron pressed a bell and a girl with dyed red hair and a heavy pregnancy beneath a smock, knocked and came in.
‘Take Olive to Room 9, Elsie, thank you. Introduce her. Show her round.’
The staircase. She still remembered the staircase years later, as she remembered the staircase in the old building at college, wide, curving. Why the staircases?
‘It’s not so bad, you know,’ the other girl said, stopping on the half-landing and putting her arm round Olive’s shoulders. Olive could feel the baby between them.
‘Six weeks to go,’ she said. ‘And you look as if you’ve more, so they’ll give you so
me of the hard chores then – scrubbing and window cleaning. It’s easier as you get near your time. I just clear the pots and wash up. And then you’ve so much stuff to get ready. It’s amazing how the days go by.’
Room 9. The number was on the door.
It overlooked the back of the house. A yard. A service area. Two trees. But then a field, and beyond the field, the sea. It was not close but still clearly visible in its deep grey-blueness.
Forever after, she remembered that first sight of it, and remembered how the first sight of it had made her inexplicably happy. Lifted her heart.
‘You’re here then. I’ve been on my own in this room for ten days.’
A thin wisp of a girl with pale hair and small features. She had a neat round of a baby, like a football.
‘I’m Kay.’
‘Olive.’
‘My gran was called Olive … that’s nice. How old are you? How far along are you?’
In what she became used to thinking of as ‘the world’ Olive had never met anyone who asked so many questions as Kay, the sort people were brought up never to ask.
What did your parents say?
Will you give it a name or let them choose?
Did they send you here?
Where do you live?
Have you told the father? What’s his name? Did you get caught the first time? Have you been sick?
They came like pattering feet, one after another, the questions, but she found that she did not mind, and answered them all and asked her own, too, though fewer, and so they settled into a sort of friendship, borne of the shared room and this place and their condition. Years later, without warning, the image of Kay would come to her mind, the thin body, pale hair. It was as if she were standing there, asking her questions, questions.
‘Do you smoke? You can smoke in the common room or outside, not anywhere else, only everybody does, we lean out of the window.’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘Why not?’
‘I suppose … my parents never did … I tried once. I wasn’t really attracted to it.’
‘That’s good … if only you’d been attracted to cigarettes instead of men, we’d have had a lot less grief. All right, well, what do you want to know about this place? Matron’s a snake. Watch out for Nurse Pitt and Nurse Flynn, they’ll get you in trouble, they enjoy it … the others are mostly all right. The cooks are lovely even if the food’s awful but it’s all right on Sundays … visitors can come to tea on Sundays though not many do. My gran came once, the last time.’
The last time?
‘Work’s hard.’
‘Where are the babies? Where are they born?’
‘The annexe – that’s the brick building on the far side. You don’t see or hear anything. Once you’ve gone into the annexe then you don’t come back here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You stay there from when the baby’s born. And it stays in the nursery with the others, except for feeding. But when the six weeks are up and it goes, you go as well.’
‘Go where?’
‘Well, wherever you’re going. I mean home or … wherever. The place you came from.’
‘Why six weeks?’
‘You don’t know anything, do you?’ And the girl reached over and touched Olive’s face gently. ‘Babies can’t be adopted before they’re six weeks, so you have them till the people who are adopting them come and get them.’
‘They can’t make you have your baby adopted. No one can force you to give your baby away.’
‘I don’t suppose they can … not force you. Only you can’t very well keep it, can you? Where would you go with it and think what people would say? You’d be even more ruined than you are already.’
Kay’s baby was due before Olive’s so there would be a new girl sharing Room 9.
Meanwhile, daily life took over, and daily life was work, plus tiredness, aching back and feet, stodgy food and permanent constipation, plus knitting and sewing everything the baby would need. It would wear the clothes she made, plus a second set, in a size larger, when it was taken by the adopters, at six weeks.
Six weeks.
She was bad at sewing, clumsy and impatient, but a decent knitter and knitting sent her into a pleasant, quiet, dreamlike state of calm. She felt her child kick and turn and found the idea of it, the thought of another person, male or female, sharing her body, an alien one and bewildering.
Kay’s small round baby-ball grew a little but the rest of her remained stick-thin. Olive felt that her own body swelled everywhere. She felt ugly and cumbersome, her legs thick as tree trunks, her face fuller, her stomach spread all round. She dreamed that her mouth was full of baby. She was choking on it.
But they laughed. Laughed as they worked, meeting on the staircase they were sweeping or by the shelves they were dusting, or the floors they were scrubbing, laughed over the knitting and sewing and eating and going out for bitterly cold walks, and on the bus they were allowed to take into town on Saturdays, laughed in the shops and the cafés and sitting on the bench overlooking the sea with fish and chips in paper. Laughed.
There was always something to laugh about.
There were ten rooms. One was kept for girls in isolation because of sickness, or insolent behaviour. When Olive arrived, there were twelve girls, who went down to nine, ten, then back to twelve.
Kay woke her up in the middle of one night, gasping, so that at first Olive thought she was in pain and heaved herself out of bed, to go and ring the bell on the landing.
‘Go back to sleep,’ Kay said. ‘I’m only crying.’
‘What is it? Are you sure you’re not having pains?’
‘I’m all right.’
She sat on Kay’s bed and reached out for her hand. A gale was blowing off the sea, rattling the windows. Kay huddled down in her blankets.
‘You can tell me anything.’
‘No. I can’t.’
‘All right. If it’s private …’
‘Yes. That’s what it is. It’s private.’
Olive bent over and kissed Kay’s cheek. It was cool. Soft. Like a child’s.
‘Thanks,’ Kay said, and turned over. ‘You’re the best. Last time, I …’
‘What? What do you mean, “last time”?’
Kay hunched herself up as well as she could
‘I’ve been here before, haven’t I? So that’s it. Twice is very bad and there’s no third chance.’
‘Oh, Kay … why?’
But she did not answer.
‘Did that baby go for adoption?’
She could barely hear the answer. ‘Yes.’
‘Poor you. Poor Kay.’
Kay lifted up the bedclothes. ‘Come in.’
‘No, we’ve got to sleep.’
But Kay waited and so Olive lay down beside her, and put her arms round her, and her baby pushed and kicked against Kay’s back, and, comforted, they went to sleep, and did not stir until the morning.
Kay was on washing-up chores, Olive cleaning bathrooms, so they did not meet all morning and when the dinner gong sounded Kay did not come to the dining room.
Olive slipped out, leaving most of her blancmange, saying she needed to fetch her sewing scissors, but Kay was not there. The bed had been made carefully, the sheets drawn tight. At two o’clock, someone came into the sewing room and said that Kay had gone into the annexe. There was no other word. The day trailed on until supper and recreation time and then bed and Olive went up to the room alone, and lay reading.
‘Fog up the river …’
The gale was still blowing. She lay listening to it, wondering what was happening to Kay. What did happen? She knew little beyond the biological facts. She had expected to be given information, even just things to read, but there was nothing. The birth of the babies was a secret ritual that went on behind closed doors and shaded windows in the other building.
At lunchtime next day, she asked.
‘You’re not meant to be told,’ Nurse Goo
le said. But then softened. ‘If I get any news, I’ll try and let you know.’
Kay had a son. Nurse Goole leaned over Olive as she was clearing the supper tables, and whispered.
That Kay had had a slow and troublesome labour, with panic at the end and almost loss of the baby, was not told.
‘When can I go and see her?’
Nurse Goole looked astonished. ‘That is strictly not allowed.’
She did not explain. Perhaps Olive was expected to know the reason by some magical process, as she was expected to know everything else.
The annexe remained out of bounds and a new girl came to share Room 9, sullen, unfriendly Pat, who smoked cigarettes out of the window which let in cold air and blew back the tobacco smell into the room. Olive turned on her side and read.
She never saw Kay again and the book became her closest friend.
But because she had nothing to lose, she started to ask questions and query rules, though always politely.
Why could no one visit girls in the annexe?
Why were they not given any preparation at all for the birth ahead?
Why was there no member of the staff they could talk to privately, about their fears and concerns? They could see a doctor or the Sister about physical worries. Why not this?
‘Troublemaker, that one,’ they said.
‘Come in, Olive. Sit down. You haven’t had any visitors?’
Not many of the girls did.
‘I have had a letter from your father, enclosed with his monthly cheque, asking if he could come and see you. He sounded rather hurt. Is there any reason why you haven’t sent me a visitor request? So many girls have no one, they’ve been ostracised by their families – or even have no one close. But you do and this will be a first grandchild, I think?’
‘Yes.’
‘So surely your father would like to meet it, before the adoption? To have a memory. It is permissible, you know.’
‘Yes.’
‘Think about it, Olive.’
Matron bent her head to her papers. Apparently, she was dismissed.
‘Oh, and Olive …’
‘Yes?’
‘We don’t have rules for rules’ sake. I think you’ll find there’s a sound reason for all of them.’
‘What is the reason for not preparing us for what will happen?’