Helpless (17 page)

I
t was my father, driving the man next door’s car, who came to collect me that afternoon. That drive, what we spoke about, if indeed we spoke at all, remains just a blur. I must have said goodbye to someone, must have thanked the matron, but I have no recollection of it, nor can I remember any of the days spent at home before I started school again. My grief was overwhelming and I felt as if I was walking in a dream, one where you could feel nothing except loss and see nothing except my baby’s face.

My mother would, I know, have taken me into town to purchase my school uniform. I know that it must have occurred because on the day I started at my new school it was hanging on the back of my bedroom door, ready for me to wear.

There was a grey skirt, a crisp white blouse and a blue blazer on the hook and on the floor was a pair of new black school shoes with new white socks tucked inside. This time, it seemed, my parents wanted me to look the same as the other girls.

My father, much to my surprise, drove me to the new school on my first day.

‘You have to be there early,’ he said by way of explanation, ‘Your headmistress wants to meet you before school starts.’

I felt a wave of apprehension. Did she know about me? Know that I had been expelled from my former school nearly nine months ago? Even worse, had she been told why? I wanted to ask, to be reassured that she didn’t know, but the words ‘pregnant’, ‘baby’ or ‘adoption’ and ‘Marianne’ were never mentioned in the same sentence by either of my parents. It was as if it had never happened.

The drive there was over all too quickly for me. Without saying a word of encouragement my father just pulled up in front of the school gates and waited for me to alight. Feeling my legs shake with nerves as I placed them on the ground, I climbed out.

The school was bigger than my previous one and I could see tennis courts and green lawns, but nothing succeeded in distracting me from that sick feeling of apprehension that was fluttering in my stomach. I slung my satchel over my shoulder and walked reluctantly into the school, seeking out the headmistress’s study.

To my relief, instead of the stern forbidding woman of my imagination, a smiling small plump one greeted me and ushered me inside. She made it clear that, although she knew about my pregnancy, she was not going to judge me.

‘Hallo, Marianne, come and sit down,’ were the first words she said to me, followed by, ‘You have been through a terrible time, I know, but I hope you will be happy here.’ At her unexpected kindness the tears I had refused to shed since I had returned home threatened to overspill my smarting eyes, but the headmistress tactfully ignored my obviously emotional state.

‘Now is the time to look at your future, Marianne,’ she told me, before asking if I had thought what I wanted to do when I reached the school-leaving age of fifteen. I saw that lying on her desk in clear view of me were my files from my old school and knew that they would contain my reports and all the notes regarding my expulsion.

I had never dreamed of a career, but suddenly for the first time I realized what it was that I really wanted to do – to train as a children’s nurse.

I blurted out my ambition to her and waited for her to tell me what I already knew – that my grades were not good and that I had lost too much time at school. Instead she heard me out without interrupting and smiled encouragingly at me.

She did tell me that my schoolwork would need to be improved but she saw no reason why, if I worked hard, that could not be done. Instead she explained that it might just be possible for me to go to a teaching hospital where I would live in the nurses’ home and start training as an auxiliary nurse. From there with a lot of hard work and practical experience I might progress up the nursing ladder. She explained that whilst academic qualifications helped you qualify faster there was another route for girls like me.

For the first few weeks I was at my new school I worried that someone other than the headmistress might know about my past. I dreaded being asked questions about where I had been at school before and why I had left it, but to my relief no one seemed curious about me.

Gradually I relaxed; the smart uniform, which helped me blend in with the other scholars, gave me more confidence than I had previously had. I began to work harder because for the first time I had a goal that could only be achieved by raising my grades. I started talking to the other girls about their ambitions and some of them wanted to go to college but most were just looking forward to the independence that earning a wage would give them.

They wanted not to have to do homework or study but be able to buy make-up and clothes, find a boyfriend and stay at home until they got married. Unlike them I knew that I wanted to leave my parents’ home as soon as it was possible and also do something worthwhile with my life. To spend those years it took to train as a nurse and get my feet firmly on the career ladder was my driving ambition. I still missed my baby, but that was a dull ache that I tucked away at the back of my mind and avoided examining, as it was still too painful.

There was one other girl who also wanted to become a nurse. ‘Might meet a good-looking doctor,’ she said with a grin. ‘That’s first prize, but nurses also marry policemen and firemen, that’s what my mum says.’ I found myself smiling back, not because I shared that dream, but for the first time I felt I was making a friend of my own.

She told me that her name was Susan, that she had a younger sister but had always wished she had a brother. She said I was lucky to have three brothers and a sister. Lucky? That was not something I had ever thought of before. Never having a moment’s peace, always surrounded by noise and mess, endless chores and intrusion was what having siblings meant to me.

Susan, with her long blonde hair and tall slim frame, looked exactly how I, at only four foot eleven, wanted to look. Boys’ eyes followed her wherever she walked but she just tossed her hair and showed them little interest. She dismissed them, saying she did not see those sorts of boys ever becoming doctors. Other girls wanted her as their friend but it was me she had singled out. We started sitting together in class, standing next to each other in assembly and in the playground, and eating our school dinners together at the same table.

She even walked with me to my bus stop before continuing on foot to her own home, and then after a few weeks she invited me to her house for tea.

‘Come tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I told my mother I had made friends with a girl in my class and she said I could bring you home.’

‘My first invitation to tea!’ I thought, and some of the grief I had carried around deep inside of me shifted.

‘Do you like that new group, the Beatles?’ she asked and, wanting to be accepted, I nodded my head enthusiastically, even though I had never heard of them or their music.

‘Good. I’ve just got their single, “Please Please Me”. We can listen to it in my room after tea.’

‘I’ll be out for tea,’ I told my mother casually the next morning.

She looked doubtfully at me.

‘It’s Susan, you know, the girl I told you about. She’s invited me to her house.’

‘All right,’ my mother said, ‘just don’t be late home. And not a minute after seven thirty – you still have your homework to do. And don’t miss that last bus.’

That day I felt a little bubble of excitement rising up inside me. Finally I had made a friend in my own age group. The moment the school bell rang and announced lessons were finished, I picked up my satchel and followed Susan out of the classroom.

Her home, a semi-detached house with bay windows and a solid wooden front door, was within walking distance. Twenty minutes later I was standing in her sitting room being introduced to her mother as Marianne, the new girl at school.

It was when we were sitting down for tea that I knew something was wrong.

Susan’s mother asked me what my father did for a living and I could tell that my reply that he worked on a farm was not met with approval, even though her smile remained on her face; a smile that slipped off it when I answered her next question.

‘Where do you live, Marianne?’ she had asked. Thrown, I gave her the name of the road, hoping that she knew nobody in it. My wish was not to be granted. ‘What’s your surname?’ she asked slowly and, with a sinking feeling, I told her.

The plate of food that she was in the middle of passing to me landed on the table with a bang. ‘Susan,’ she said to her daughter, ‘come into the kitchen – now!’ and with a bewildered look my new friend obeyed.

Her younger sister looked goggle-eyed at me. She had sensed the atmosphere in the room change and knew it was something I had said that had caused it. I just sat on the chair wanting to leave.

Through the door I heard the faint words including ‘slut’, ‘not in my house’ and ‘don’t want you mixing with the likes of her’, and pushing my plate aside I picked up my satchel, walked into the hall, opened the front door as quietly as I could and crept away.

Susan ran after me and walked with me as far as the bus stop. She tried to apologize for her mother’s outburst and said that she was still my friend.

‘You won’t be tomorrow,’ I thought, and I was right.

It turned out that Susan’s mother knew Dora, who had given her a distorted version of what had happened.

She had only been good to me, and how had I repaid her? I had slept with her husband, become pregnant by him and had the baby adopted.

When Susan’s mother had told her daughter Dora’s version of the facts there was no need for her mother to forbid her to mix with me; that was a decision she came to all by herself. What was even worse than the loss of her friendship was her telling everyone in our class why she no longer wanted to speak to me.

In the classroom she changed seats, leaving me sitting alone. I tried to talk to her in the playground but she gave me a look that held both contempt and pity.

‘My mother says you are a cheap little whore,’ she said, loud enough for the girls nearby to hear, ‘and that I’m not to mix with you.’ Then, linking arms with a mousy-haired sycophantic girl, she walked away. Her latest best friend threw me a triumphant look and I heard them laugh. My face burnt with shame for I knew that I was the object of their merriment and I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.

All that week I was aware of girls huddling in groups as they whispered about the scandal, while boys made sniggering lewd remarks.

‘Hey, Marianne,’ one swaggering teenager, bolder than the rest, called out to me, ‘what’s it feel like having a baby wriggling around inside you?’

‘Something else wriggled in you first, though, didn’t it?’ said another, and the group collapsed with laughter.

It took six months for them to get bored with baiting me: six months where I held my head up as I tried to ignore both the malicious innuendo and the spiteful titters; six months when every night I cried into my pillow. I had so hoped I would fit in, but again I was alone.

N
o sooner had my new, happier life at school crumbled away than the truce between my father and me ended. Since experiencing the rigorous routine at the girls’ home I had become what my parents considered to be obsessively tidy. At weekends when I looked at the dirty surfaces, piles of unwashed dishes and the bucket full with the newest baby’s dirty nappies, it made my nose wrinkle in distaste and I decided to do something about it.

One Saturday, as soon as my mother had gone to the shops, taking the youngest child with her, and my father had left for work, I sent my brothers and sister out in the garden to play, rolled up my sleeves and scrubbed and cleaned.

Not only did I like making the house look as nice as possible, but also keeping busy stopped me dwelling on Susan and the looks of contempt that came my way whenever I saw her.

First the nappies were put into the largest saucepan and boiled, then I tackled the stack of washing up, wiped every spot of grease off the work surfaces and finally got down on my hands and knees to clean the floor. By the time my mother returned the kitchen was gleaming; a state that never lasted long. By the following weekend the floor was littered with crumbs, congealed food had yet again stuck to the table and oven and the pile of grubby nappies was back in the bucket. Every Saturday I simply started all over again.

As I worked, I let my mind wander to the life I was going to have once I left school. I dreamt of leaving home, of going to train as a nurse and of wearing that smart starched blue and white uniform. Emptying bedpans and scrubbing floors, however, was never part of that dream. Instead I pictured small faces turned trustingly up to me and grateful parents saying how thankful they were that it was me who had looked after their child.

Oh, how different my life was going to be then, I thought as I cleaned and polished. In the nurse’s home, instead of having to share with my sister, who left her toys strewn around our bedroom, I would have a room of my own. On my bed there would be clean crisp sheets and wool blankets instead of those old clothes that served to keep us warm. My clothes would be hung up neatly, my undies would be new and clean, and best of all no little fingers would touch my toiletries.

It was those thoughts that gave me hope, and it was that hope that made me work at my studies. In the evenings my school books would be spread on the kitchen table as I worked hard to catch up with my peers; something that my father sneered at, but not as much as he did at my cleaning the house.

If I had thought my parents would be pleased by my domesticated efforts I was wrong. Instead they seemed almost affronted, as though every time I picked up a brush or mop it was a criticism of the way they lived.

‘Think you’re too good for us now,’ my father said with a snort when he saw me ironing my school uniform. ‘Proper little madam you’ve become.’ I just looked at him and ignored what he said, but that did not stop the disloyal thoughts running through my head.

‘If you want to live like pigs, I don’t,’ I longed to say, but commonsense made me refrain from voicing those words. Maybe something in my expression told him what was in my mind, for his torrent of sneering comments at my efforts increased.

‘See you’ve even been scrubbing our lav,’ he said derisively. When going to the outside lavatory he had found it not just scrubbed clean but smelling of disinfectant. ‘You’ll be wanting to scrub us all next.’

‘Oh, don’t take any notice of him, Marianne,’ my mother said wearily when he had stomped out after one of his outbursts; but I noticed that she did not thank me either.

It only took a few weeks for my father to show me even more clearly what he thought of my efforts at making our home nicer. I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor when he came back from work early. That morning, intent on getting to the back yard, he walked across the room with his muddy boots, leaving a trail of dirt in his wake.

It was too much for me to keep silent. I stood up and glared at him.

‘Please, Dad,’ I said, ‘I’ve spent an hour cleaning that floor. Won’t you take your boots off?’

His face turned red with rage. Just for those few moments I had forgotten how quickly my father’s temper could erupt.

‘Who do you think you are? Think you can give me orders, do you?’ Seeing his face and his raised arm I shrunk back in fear, but not fast enough. The blow hit me on my shoulder so hard that I lost my balance and slipped and fell onto the still wet floor. At the same time his foot struck the bucket, sending sheets of dirty water across the kitchen.

‘Well, you can clean it again,’ he yelled. ‘Seems that’s what you like doing the most.’ I hated him then, and, sniffling with both hurt and shock, I got down on my hands and knees to wipe up the mess he had made.

Once finished I went to my room. ‘Let the children fend for themselves for once,’ I thought as I lay on my bed. There I took refuge in my dreams of leaving home, escaping a family that day by day I felt I was ceasing to belong to and not having to hear the cruel sniggers at school. I wanted to go to where no one knew me, no one knew my parents and no one knew about my baby.