Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue (40 page)

When I started researching this book, there was still much to uncover and much I wanted to find irrespective of this memoir. I wept on reading Emily Ball's death certificate – dead aged twenty-seven and reduced to a housekeeper by the man whose children she bore, and died for – though it took me a moment or two to register the document's full implications. And thinking of how Emily's young life was swept away on paper and in fact, and of how impossibly hard it must have been, she seemed to stand for all the other young women before and after her who never stood a chance. I was also crying, I suppose, for another young woman; someone of whom, at that point, I knew little,
beyond her name. But then (on paper, at least) I found her.

My mum started trying to trace her birth mother after the change of law in 1975 that enabled adopted children (following counselling) to have access to their original birth certificates and thus the possibility of tracing their birth mothers. Knowledge of a name, an address and, in this instance, an occupation is an extraordinary thing to acquire when you have waited nearly forty years to discover it, but unless that name is unusual, it does not get you very far in identifying a person; you also need some idea of their age and place of birth. A name alone produced multiple candidates of childbearing age in different parts of the country. The helpful (and logical) advice that you pursue marriage certificates next shows how many people assume a geographical stability domestic servants and many working-class families did not have. The documents that would also have helped – the censuses of 1921 and, especially, 1931 – were, of course, inaccessible (1931 will remain so, having been destroyed by fire).

The most obvious route is via the actual adoption, but the court records pertaining to my mum's adoption were apparently nonexistent and the NCAA is now a defunct organisation, its records taken over by Westminster City Council. It is extremely difficult to trace adoption records that pre-date the Second World War: No. Nothing. No. I'm Very Sorry. Lost. Gone. Each letter or call, however sympathetically expressed, a rebuff so strong its kickback dammed up further enquiries. Months passed; months and years.

A chance repeat enquiry turned up some archival tidying in an office initially contacted years before, and, this time, produced court records. I'm sure my mum was not the only adoptee of her generation to discover how scant these details are in files dating back to the twenties and thirties. Those with some knowledge of
adoption today would be aghast at the flimsy documentation. All those ‘satisfactory' arrangements barely recorded; birth mothers' stories forgotten and not passed on. Even into the 1960s, it was customary to advise adoptive parents to conceal the child's origins and tell children their biological parents had died – and sometimes violently at that: in a car crash. A sure way to end probing questions, but what a brutal legacy to hang round a child's neck.

In my mum's case, however, there was one lead. Together with the details on her birth certificate, an index card existed in the files of the NCAA (which was almost but not totally defunct when my mum began her search: the Association existed until 1978, when local authorities took over the responsibility for adoptions). This index card included a further name, F. M. Wood: Jessie was not alone when she took my mum to Tower Cressy. My brother discovered this when he made some preliminary enquiries. Thank goodness the index card was found when it was. Some time later, that stray documentation also vanished, and, with it, all evidence of Cora's connection with the NCAA. For many years, there were three mysteries in my mum's adoption story: the ‘mystery lady' who visited Racecourse Road; F. M. Wood, and the most significant mystery of all, the woman I've called Jessie Mee.

The ‘mystery lady' has haunted my mum's story for years. For a long time, we imagined she was Mrs Sedgwick, Jessie Mee's employer and, possibly, the wife (or mother) of the man who made her pregnant, who wanted to ensure the child was safe (chauffeur-driven cars being more likely to belong to leafy north London and to a past I cannot fully recreate). But the ‘mystery' visit to my grandma came several years and accumulated paperwork after an adoption bound and stitched together in secrecy, though, back in
the 1930s it may just have been possible for Mrs Sedgwick to unlock those doors. Annie would certainly have wanted to impress upon someone of her standing how well she was looking after my mum. After all, my grandma told Cora that their visitor was ‘a very nice lady,' and ‘very well off'. Yet why did Mrs Sedgwick wait so long before making an appearance? This is where the theory stumbled.

More recently, my greater knowledge of the National Children Adoption Association suggested an alternative, if imperfect, scenario. Ladies with chauffeur-driven cars were exactly those the Association cultivated and attracted: women with means who could attend their fund-raising dinners and had a use for those evening gowns and mah-jong sets. However, Clara Andrew wanted adopted children to make fresh starts, so it seems strange that the NCAA would risk the awkward questions that could so easily have stemmed from the mystery lady's visit. Its literature makes no reference to occasional inspections or follow-ups of any kind (though some of those involved with children – the NSPCC, for example – would have been happier if these had taken place), so there seems to have been no apparatus for a visit like this one. Unless news of Willie's ill health and receipt of the dreaded Means Test had percolated down from Relieving Officer to Health Visitor, though, in that case, the visitor would have been a gabardine-clad woman arriving on foot, not in a chauffeur-driven car; and that version of events would also suggest a far more rigorous approach to adoption than I believe existed then. (Clara Andrew is on record as saying she thought that adopted children, like all others, should, to some extent, take their chances.) So, the ‘lady' continued to be a mystery.

And a further aspect of her visit puzzled me: if she was acting
on the NCAA's behalf, why did she allow my grandma to head off to my mum's school in that fizz of anxiety? Perhaps her polite protestations went unheeded and Annie set off before she could be stopped; or else, while Annie was away, the mystery lady realised the complications that would ensue from meeting Cora, and that she'd overstepped the mark. Both would account for her hasty withdrawal. Yet, my grandma's behaviour on that afternoon does not sound a bit like Annie, who was always composed, no matter how anxious she was feeling. Unless she felt wrong-footed by this apparition in marocain silk, thought she was being questioned about her ability to care for my mum. She had the same rights in law as a birth parent, but, like any parent, if questioned, would have felt intensely distressed. If she felt the need to prove that care, and thought her love in jeopardy, Annie would have done anything.

For a while, F. M. Wood, the person named on the index card, seemed much less significant, though, in fact, she was the key to unlocking my mum's story. I'd assumed her to be a middle-class woman, someone else well-connected who assisted Jessie (at one with the mystery lady and Mrs Sedgwick). And Annie always hinted that my mother's father was ‘posh'. Of course she did. Why wouldn't she? And perhaps he was. The different threads appeared to fit.

F. M. Wood lived in London, N1. Fastening on the postcode, I pictured Georgian houses and nicely turned pavements and squares. I forgot how easily, in London, smart bleeds into down-at-heel. So I was surprised when her address turned out to be Hoxton, unlovely in those days. The house is not there anymore, slum clearance managing what Hitler did not get round to.

She revealed her identity quite quickly, although I've given her another one here. Frances Wood was the married name of Jessie's elder sister. At last I was on the right track, except it was not quite as straightforward as that. Try as I might, I could not make the pieces fit. Large contingents of people with the same surname in far-flung parts of the country provided the usual baskets of red herrings. Though it looked as if Frances would be easy to trace, and, through her, Jessie, the trail very quickly went cold. My researches continued: court records, hospital archives, electoral registers, census details; birth, death and marriage certificates, trade directories, on and on… trying to piece together a narrative from the poor threads available. Though England had seemed full of possibilities, these led nowhere; Ireland was where I needed to look.

I still know the strange calm I felt when, sat at my computer, I knew, without doubt, I'd found Jessie. I know the date and the hour she came to light. She was waiting to be discovered all along. I can see myself picking up the phone to give my mum the news she'd thought she would never hear. I'd always imagined catching a train to reveal that news in person, but some information will not wait.

Jessie Mee was in her early twenties when she gave birth to Cora. In some ways, she was barely more than the ‘girl' Annie described. She was one of eleven surviving children, the eldest already married before Jessie started school. Her beginnings do not surprise me. Her mother's was the same old story: in and out of pregnancy from a very young age, the latest baby barely weaned before the next one stirred inside her.

Jessie's father was a builder; her eldest brother followed him
into the trade, but things were more difficult for girls. As in England, domestic service was their best option. Once they reached their mid-teens, it was time they put their feet under someone else's table. At least two of Jessie's siblings were in service at some point, including Frances, before, and possibly after, she came to London.

Women left Ireland in greater numbers than men in the early years of the twentieth century and provided a significant proportion of London's domestic staff. London-born girls were said to look down their noses at the work and were disliked by prospective employers for that reason, being thought too independent and too knowing. Expanding opportunities in factories, offices and shops beckoned them. Provincial young women and migrants, like Jessie, took their places. The high proportion of Irish-born women living in Kensington, Hampstead, Westminster and St Marylebone at the start of the 1930s was almost entirely due to the demand for domestic servants, despite anti-Irish feeling among some employers.

How Jessie's life must have changed from the days when she raced her brothers and sisters along Main Street, past the draper's, the boot shop and the Temperance Hall, to when she became Mrs Sedgwick's cook. Days serving breakfast, luncheon and high tea; evenings off at the cinema. But, of course, there was more than this to Jessie's story: in 1929, she was pregnant with my mum.

Inter-war London could be every bit as overwhelming as the city can seem today, albeit on a smaller scale. And just as capable of swallowing up the desperate, the poor and the lonely – young and vulnerable servants among them. But Jessie Mee was not alone: she had her sister Frances, and another sibling was also in London around this time.

Frances was a married woman with small children when her younger sister became pregnant. Like many working-class families in London between the wars, she and her husband rented rooms in shared houses, and then upped sticks to another shared house nearby. Life seemed to catch at their coat tails. Addresses previously occupied by two couples housed three when the Woods pitched up, making for even more of a squeeze.

Even if she wanted to, Jessie could not make a permanent home with Frances and her pregnancy may have been a source of some tension between them, older sisters being supposed to look out for younger ones. Nor would Jessie have wished to return to Ireland pregnant. A certain carelessness surrounded illegitimate births. In 1930, one in four illegitimate babies born in Ireland did not survive their first year. Also, in 1930, a Custom House official, a doctor, uncovered an extremely high rate of infant mortality in a Cork home for unmarried mothers: more than 100 of 180 babies born in the previous year died. The matron (a nun) and the Home's medical officers were entirely complacent about covering up an infection that had the babies in their care dropping like flies. No, Ireland was not her best option. Jessie may have sought spiritual advice from a Catholic priest, but I doubt she sought practical help because, for the time being at least, she remained at Hazelmere Avenue.

Whatever the circumstances surrounding my mum's birth, Jessie took pride in her child: she named her after herself. The name by which my mum is known was chosen by Annie and Willie. She also held on to her for as long as she could – the NCAA took babies far younger than Cora.

Women who placed children for adoption between the wars did not intend to be traced years later, nor did the authorities wish
them uncovered. Better by far that they dissolve into the background, their stories swept under the carpet; the slate wiped clean. Funny how such phrases describe domestic acts. How Jessie must have wished it were that simple.

I don't know what happened to her in the weeks after she gave up my mum. I try not to think of Jessie's empty arms, her damp blouse. If she did squeeze in with her sister, she only did so for a very short time – by the autumn of 1930, the Woods had moved again and Jessie was not with them. Within a year or so, she was back in Ireland and, although I don't know the full story of her life, I do know how it ended.

I was right to cry on reading Emily Ball's death certificate. She was not alone in her ghastly fate. Jessie Mee also died in childbirth, another young woman who gave up her life too soon, and left behind young children. This was a discovery I had not wanted or expected to make.

She is lying in a small graveyard now, with some members of her family beside her. Two sides of the cemetery are bounded by trees; hills and further trees shape the horizon. Those green hills that hold centuries of secrets hold Jessie's secrets too. Though not unkempt, the graveyard is gently overgrown and lacks distinct paths between gravestones. Dotted among the long grass on the day that I was there, were clusters of the deepest purple clover I have ever seen, groups of slender ‘chimney sweeps' and richly yellow vetches. When I stood before the grave with my brother and my mum, I heard the distinctive notes of birdsong. It is quiet there, peaceful. Finding Jessie is about leaving her be.