My Secret Sister: Jenny Lucas and Helen Edwards' Family Story (27 page)

I had a great American caddy at that time, nicknamed ‘Neat Pete’. As I was walking across from my car to the practice area, I spotted Pete beckoning me.

‘Come on,’ he yelled. ‘You’ve got to go straight on the tee.’

So off we went and, with no practice at all, I hit a cracking shot from the tee, straight down the middle of the fairway.

‘Well,’ said Pete. ‘You certainly don’t have to warm up a Royce Rolls!’

I made a great many friends on the tour, including some of the regular spectators. There was one American couple, Pat and Mike Eckstein, who were like a mam and dad to me and came to watch me play whenever they could. On the day of the last round of the World Championship, I knew they planned to be there. For some reason, I hit the most horrific shot from the tee – it went shooting off to the right, going straight for where the crowds of spectators were walking.

‘Fore on the right,’ yelled a marshal. Everyone ducked or dived out of the way. It was quite a melee. Despite the warning, my ball did hit one of the onlookers, and I was really concerned about it, but by the time I had walked over there, everyone had been moved away. I hit a good shot onto the front edge of the green and carried on with the match. Every now and then, while waiting to take my shots, I looked around for Pat and Mike, but I couldn’t spot them in the crowds until we got to the fifth hole. I was partnering Nancy Lopez that day and we finished our round together and signed our cards.

Then Pat and Mike came over. ‘We’re here. We’re fine!’

It was the first chance I’d had to talk to them. As Pat approached, I couldn’t help but notice her arm, swollen black and blue.

‘My God, Pat! What’s happened to your arm?’

‘You happened to it,’ she laughed. ‘You hit me on the first hole!’

Somehow, out of the many thousands of people watching us tee off on that first hole, I’d managed to find and hit the one person who was a good friend.

‘I didn’t want them to let you know,’ she explained. ‘They wanted to take me away to the hospital to have my arm checked, but I refused because I knew it would upset you if you found out. And anyway, I wanted to stay and watch you, and I knew you’d be looking out for us.’

Fortunately, there was no serious damage, though I think the bruising took weeks to disappear completely.

At home, life was happy, I thought, whenever I managed to spend time there. My mother had by now retired and seemed to be coping well, surrounded by her sister and brothers and their families, and after all those years when she’d worked so hard to support my swimming and golf coaching, it was my turn to help her financially, which was a great relief and pleasure for me when I was often so far from home. Richard continued to be very supportive of my career and never complained at my long absences. When I was back with him, our relationship always seemed happy and comfortable, focused on everyday things. But we never looked ahead much, and something was beginning to niggle me.

CHAPTER 24

Helen

The World’s Not Wide Enough

As we flew back to England with our baby to ourselves at last, the sense of relief transformed us into giddy teenagers. Our spirits lightened with every passing mile as we travelled further and further away from my parents. I was twenty-one, I was married with a baby, and I was free.

Back in Northumberland, we moved straight into the house that used to belong to Simon’s grandfather, who had recently died. It was a traditional two up, two down semi in North Shields, full of old-fashioned furniture, but we were grateful for a home of our own. That first night back in Northumberland was the first time that Scott had ever slept through the night. It seemed like such a good omen. Simon’s parents lived close by, as did some of his other relations, and I enjoyed getting to know them all.

George and Joan regularly came to visit and we spent a lot of time with them and their children. We renewed old friendships and enjoyed the life of a young married couple again. It was such a relief. I was happy, for two months . . . until we received a letter from South Africa.

‘Your mother is pining away,’ Tommy wrote. ‘She’s missing the bairn. So we’re coming back to live with you.’

My body tightened up. Just when we had rebuilt our lives as a small family unit, with our own plans and aspirations, our own future to relish, the hammer had fallen on us. Would I never be free of them?

I put down the letter and gave Scott a cuddle. He wanted to get down again, of course, to be free to continue his crawling exploration of the uncharted corners of our living room, but I needed his warmth, his zest for life to lighten my mood. The one and only good thing about this letter was that my parents couldn’t afford to come till the following year. We had some time, at least, to cement our own relationships with each other, the three of us, and to enjoy our remaining freedom.

Over the next few days, Simon and I discussed this situation and agreed that we really had no choice but to accept the inevitable. We wanted to refuse to have them to live with us, but my father had by now had three heart attacks and would never get a mortgage or be able to afford the rent on a place on their own. They wouldn’t even qualify for a council house, no longer being resident in the area.

I did write back and tell them we only had a two-bedroomed house, but they made no response to that.

One evening, as we walked back from Simon’s parents’ house, a familiar car passed us in a hurry.

‘That’s odd,’ said Simon. ‘Isn’t that George’s car?’

We quickened our stride and turned the corner into our road. There he was, parked outside our house. We rushed towards him as he got out of his car. The grim look on his face was an omen, and I knew it wasn’t a good one.

We went in together.

‘Sit down,’ he told me in a gentle voice betrayed by the anxiety behind his eyes. ‘I had a phone call from Mam.’

My heart jolted. I didn’t want to hear this.

‘There’s no easy way to say it.’ He paused. ‘Dad died a few hours ago.’

I sat there, stunned. My father was only fifty-three, the same age as my mother. I think I went into shock. He was too young to die. Of course I knew he had nearly died that time when I had resuscitated him, but now it had happened when I was far away and he really was dead. I should have been there. Perhaps I could have saved him again. Yes, he was a tyrant, but he was my dad. My eyes welled up with tears, thinking about him and about the rare good times we had enjoyed together – those trips in his brick lorry when I was a small child in Seghill. Sorrow and guilt battled against my relief that I would never again suffer his bullying control, but most of all, I felt I had lost someone important in my life and my first tears were for him.

Inevitably, as it all sank in, my thoughts turned to my mother. I felt for her, as I realized she would be devastated. What would she do? I knew the answer to that question, of course. Our lives and all our hopes were about to be changed again.

The rest of that day was a blur.

Mercia was staying with friends in Johannesburg when she phoned me.

‘He had a massive heart attack at home,’ she said. ‘And by the time they got him to the hospital, it was too late. He was dead.’

I could hear the tears. I knew they were tears for herself as much as for him.

‘I asked your dad only a few days ago what I should do if anything happened to him.’

‘What did he say?’ I didn’t need to ask, but I wanted to make it easier for her.

‘He said, “Make your way to Helen. She will look after you.”

‘So are you going to come back to England?’ I asked, groaning inside.

‘Yes. The people I’m staying with will arrange it all for me. I’ll let you know the details and you can meet me at the airport.’

That’s it, I thought. I’m twenty-one years old. We’ve just set up our own home and our own lives with our first baby, and my mother is going to move back in with us, ready to take over when we’ve hardly begun.

I wept most of the evening, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not get to sleep that night. In the early hours, and most of the following nights, I suffered a recurrence of the old panic attacks I’d had at the age of ten when we lived at Whitley Bay. Simon was so worried about me that he called the doctor, who said I was in shock.

My mother left South Africa a few days later, in January 1972. She left all their furniture, all her personal possessions and our family photographs behind, to be disposed of by strangers. She arrived back in England with one suitcase and no money.

‘I’m going to devote the rest of my life to this family,’ she vowed.

I tried to smile, but every cell groaned, ‘Oh no! Do I really need this?’

In May 1973, three weeks late, Simon took me to the maternity unit of the hospital to be induced.

‘Would you like to stay with your wife for the birth?’ the midwife asked Simon.

‘I don’t think so,’ he grinned. ‘I would pass out.’

The nurse laughed. ‘That’s OK. We’d just leave you on the floor till you woke up!’

Our daughter Donna was born the double of Scott, except for the blackest of black hair – a beautiful baby. When she was handed to me I was overwhelmed with so many feelings. This precious, beautiful little girl was ours. She was gorgeous and I immediately loved her to bits.

A few days later the nursery nurse whispered to me, ‘Your Donna is the most beautiful of all my babies. But don’t tell any of the other mothers I said so, or I shall be in trouble.’

In the months and years that followed, I finally had the chance to go for a job I wanted to do. I did my nurse’s training and built up a good career for myself. We had my mother as well as the two children to keep now, so I worked long hours at the Nuffield Hospital in Newcastle – many twelve-to sixteen-hour days. But work was no problem compared with trying to do the right thing in my mother’s eyes. I had long been accustomed to not being good enough.

My mother once said to me, ‘It’s your duty to take care of me, because I don’t have another life. You’re my only daughter, so it’s your job to look after me.’

George worked for a company called Schat Davit, who wanted to open up a new base in the USA. They appointed George the taskmaster for this move, which was the opportunity he needed, and he took his family away to a new life in Florida. Of course, the job was only part of the reason for the move. I think he felt for me, because I was the one who was left with the burden of Mercia. I appreciated that he had his life and he had to make choices for his family. My time would come one day, but it didn’t come for many years. Simon joined the police force and we both worked shifts, but we tried hard to have one of us there when the children came home from school. We didn’t want my mother always to have them to herself. Nor did we want to lose the new closeness we had begun to achieve with them. This meant that one of us arrived home just as the other was going out, and we hardly had any time together. The only opportunities for all four of us to be a family together were on holidays away with the children – but my mother came too.

She took over the running of our home and looked after our children. We didn’t get much of a look in. The miracle was that she became the mother figure to them that she had never been to me. I remember one occasion, not long after she came back to England, when Scott was a toddler and he wasn’t well. He woke up during the evening and I heard him crying, so I stood up to go up and see him. My mother leapt forward, pushed me out of the way, rushed up the stairs and got to Scott first.

‘Oh, sweetheart!’ I heard her say as she picked him up and cuddled him. There were many occasions like that.

Simon had a chat with her. ‘I don’t think it’s right that you push Helen aside when the children are crying.’

‘Why?’ she huffed. ‘Have I done something wrong? I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong.’

‘Well, no. You’re not doing anything wrong, but Helen is their mother. She wants to see to them and have that time with them.’

‘Oh,’ she sulked. Mercia didn’t speak to me for a long time after that.

It made no difference. My mother continued to push me out at every opportunity, and sadly I allowed her to do this. I don’t know why – perhaps I felt sorry for her. It sapped my morale to the point where I was distraught at times. She made me feel I owed her something, and that I should be grateful to her for being my mother.

One Mother’s Day, I was up first, before anybody else. When Scott and Donna came down I gave them their breakfast, then my mother started down the stairs. The children both ran to the hall.

‘Happy Mother’s Day, Grandma,’ they chimed in unison. They ran up a few steps to meet her and gave her cards and presents.

I thought, this is not right! It wasn’t jealousy. I just thought, these are my children and I am their mother.

I think she did have the grace to say, ‘Your mother’s downstairs as well.’ They realized it was my day too after that.

On these special occasions, she always claimed the children for herself. And I worked such long hours that, to my shame, I let it happen. Sometimes it was the only way to cope. But I wouldn’t have had to work so hard if we didn’t have that extra mouth to feed. She had a gravy train at our house for many years. We bought her everything she needed.

Of course, with us both working so hard, it was good to know that the children had someone always there for them. Simon was often there when they got home from school, before he went off to work. He sat and watched TV with them and knew all the children’s programmes.

I’d say, ‘Who’s Bagpuss?’ They’d all look at me as if I was a dunce.

As they grew older, they were able to stay up later, so when I arrived home they were keen to tell me things. I used to sit and do their homework with them and I went to all their parents’ evenings at school. It wasn’t easy to fit everything in, but they were good times, especially with the children.

I liked to do the things that my parents never did. I wanted the children to have experiences and opportunities I’d never had – birthday parties, Christmas presents under the tree, outings, activities of all kinds. Most of all, I gave them lots of cuddles. When I was that child alone in my bedroom, unloved, I used to think to myself, when I have my babies, it’s going to be different for them. I learned from my parents’ mistakes. I knew, even then, what a child needs – all the things I hadn’t known. I knew I wanted to be hugged, so I hugged my children a lot and told them ‘I love you’ all the time.