The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers (14 page)

As we made our way from the wintry rural solitude of They -don Bois towards the teeming and brightly lit bulk of my beloved city, I tried to think about what the parents chosen for Paul might be
like. Though it was almost impossible to think of another woman holding him, mothering him, taking ownership of him, there was a part of me desperate to be reassured about her, too. What would she
look like? Would she be gentle? Would she be warm and responsive? I didn’t even know if I would get to see her, let alone speak to her. But if I did, what would she think of
me
?

We arrived at around 3.30 in the afternoon and I finally put away the Polaroid picture, slipping it into the envelope in which I’d put the cot card. I’d had almost no conversation
with the driver, a taciturn middle-aged man from the local taxi firm, who had probably made this journey many times before and from whom I’d sensed a kind of grim-faced but unspoken
acceptance that this wasn’t the time or place for chatty small talk. I wondered what he thought of all the girls and babies he ferried here. Did he judge us as harshly as we judged
ourselves?

He let me out onto the wide residential road, came round to open the rear door of the car and nodded silently. The buildings opposite were imposing four-storey Victorian terraces, their
frontages almost all identical. Each had steps, whitewashed walls, big bay windows and an air of opulence; they seemed to look down on me, in every sense. In front of me huddled a group of
low-level, modern buildings, which looked incongruous in this elegant place, and were mainly hidden behind a high brick wall. The street was tree-lined on both sides, and the bare winter branches
formed a spindly canopy above us.

Clutching Paul in the crook of my right arm and my big holdall with my left hand, I followed the driver through the gateway to the buildings,where he pushed open a door to let us through. He
seemed to know exactly where he was going, confirming my thought that he had done this many times before.

‘Good afternoon,’ said a lady, who was standing behind a big reception desk. ‘You have a letter?’ She looked at me enquiringly.

I put down my holdall – the driver had disappeared back through the door – and pulled the letter from where I’d stowed it in my coat pocket. Paul stirred very slightly but
didn’t fully wake as I did this. The woman at the desk barely gave him a glance. I wondered what it must be like to
be
her. To spend much of your working day dealing with ashen-faced
young women, like me, clutching babies, and then watching them leave empty-handed. To spend the rest of the day in the company of new adoptive parents, taking those same babies off to new lives.
Had she become immune to the extremes of emotion she must encounter? Did she feel anything?

She took the letter and read it,and I decided from her expression that what she probably felt most was that she was doing the right thing. She then turned back to me. There was no hostility in
her features, but there was no smile of sympathy either. ‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you up.’ I picked up my bag and followed her.

The room she showed me into was high-ceilinged and bare of adornments. It was clearly a waiting room, as it contained a low table on which an array of dog-eared magazines was scattered, and a
number of assorted wooden chairs. ‘Just wait there,’ she said, closing the door behind her.

It was opened again, only a few moments later, by another woman, this time younger – perhaps only in her twenties – and much more welcoming. ‘Hello. I’m Miss Whiteley,
the Adoption Officer. And you’re Miss Brown, yes?’ She approached now, looking smart and businesslike. ‘And this will be Paul?’

I nodded. I was beginning to feel numb. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘And how was your journey here?’ she asked, as she peered at Paul. ‘Did he sleep all the way?’

I nodded again, touched at her interest. ‘Yes. Yes, he did.’

‘Right,’ she said, waving an arm towards the chairs along the wall. ‘Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back with you in a few minutes.’

I put my bag down beside one of the chairs, and settled Paul and myself on it. He was still fast asleep and I was torn between my natural desire to leave him settled and peaceful and my need to
spend some last precious time gazing into his eyes. His lashes, so dark, brushed his cheeks as he slept, and I contented myself with gently smoothing his velvet-soft skin with the side of my little
finger, feeling his warmth and drinking in the smell of him.

I had been sitting there for about fifteen minutes before Miss Whiteley returned. It felt like longer, which for some reason made me feel anxious – what was happening? At the same time, it
meant cherished extra moments together. She entered the room again, leaving the door open this time, her mouth forming a smile as she approached. ‘I’m just going to take him to show him
to the couple,’ she said, proffering her arms to take Paul from mine.

The couple.
It made my heart thump. ‘Okay,’ I said, rising and handing him to her trustingly. His eyes flicked open at the movement and looked straight into mine, but soon
closed again, as he sank almost immediately back into sleep, as young babies do.

Miss Whiteley smiled again. ‘I’ll be back in just a minute,’ she said.

More time passed, only this time I imagined it would be shorter. Remembering the little bag of baby clothes I’d brought with me, I bent down and opened my holdall to retrieve it, ready to
hand it over on their return. It was then that I made the decision to keep Paul’s rosary for myself, so I removed it from the package and slipped it into a side pocket in my handbag.

I was curious to know what the couple’s reaction would be on seeing my beautiful baby. Then I heard an exclamation – clearly one of delight – in a female voice, so I assumed it
was the adoptive mother’s. Good, I remember thinking proudly, despite the lump that had lodged in my throat. They must have really liked him. I sat back down on the chair and continued to
wait.

But then the door, which had been ajar, opened again fully to reveal Miss Whiteley, now empty-handed. ‘They think he’s lovely,’ she told me, once again approaching my chair. I
stood up then, as if to attention. Where was Paul? ‘And he’s got
such
a lot of hair, hasn’t he!’ she said. ‘Are these his things?’ She gestured towards
the bag of clothes beside my holdall.

I had no words. I couldn’t answer. I had completely lost the power of speech. Was that
it
? Wasn’t she bringing him back to me to say goodbye first? ‘Thank you.
I’ll pass these on,’ she said, answering my unspoken question. So it was true. They had taken him. She
wasn’t
bringing him back. I felt tears flood my eyes. Why
hadn’t I realised she would do that? Why hadn’t someone
told
me this was how it would happen? She’d said she’d be back in a minute, hadn’t she? She’d
said, ‘I’ll
show
him to them’, not ‘I’ll
give
him to them’, hadn’t she?

I felt all hope drain from me. Was that
really
it? My stomach turned into a cold, cavernous pit in that instant, and it felt as if my heart had dropped into it. That
was
it.
I’d been denied saying goodbye to my baby, denied that last chance to stroke his cheek and feel his fingers grip mine, to kiss his tiny mouth in loving farewell. Why hadn’t she
told
me I was never going to see him again?Why hadn’t she told me it was time to say goodbye to him? I’d thought she was just going to
show
them, not let them
take
him. Why hadn’t she said? Oh, why hadn’t she
said
?

Miss Whiteley smiled at me again, but it was a much smaller smile this time, one that seemed to say that this was how it worked, this was what was best for me. ‘Thank you,’ she said
again, coldly, as she bent to pick up the carrier bag. ‘I’ll make sure they get these right away. And, well, please do sit for a moment if you need to. You can go when you’re
ready.’

Ready? I thought.
Ready?
How could a person
ever
be ready to do something like this? How could you ever be
ready
to give up your baby?

Miss Whiteley left the room then, and returned to the adoptive parents. I knew because I could hear them talking together, only now in low voices, tempering their obvious delight as if being
mindful of the occasion, almost as if they were peripheral guests at a funeral who must take care to show respect to the bereaved.

As I stood there my body became animate again, twitching back to life, and with the life came the pain building and building, like a great rush of pressure, till I became racked with
unstoppable, shuddering sobs. My baby was no longer mine. He was theirs. It was over. And I knew I’d never feel whole again.

I looked up at the clock on the wall as I left. It was 3.50 on 16 January 1964. It was a date and time I’d never forget.

I left the offices of the Crusade of Rescue in the same sort of daze I’d been in on the long journey there. The day was clear, growing dark now, but I was only dimly aware
of it, because I seemed to have lost my mind. For some time I just wandered from street to street blindly. I didn’t know where I was, much less where the nearest Tube station was. I kept
ploughing on, though, under tree after tree, crossing roads randomly, not even looking. All I knew for certain was that I had lost my beloved child and I was never going to see him again.

Eventually, after something like an hour or so had passed – I recall seeing a clock – I recognised the lights of an Underground station, and wandered in, my holdall now a dead weight
on the end of my arm. I then got on a Tube train, though I didn’t know where it was going and I didn’t care. The train was really crowded, with everyone strap-hanging and jostling. As I
looked at the mostly expressionless faces, I thought, ‘
You have absolutely no idea what I have just had to do.
’ Eventually, the train reached some stations I recognised, and I
stayed on it till it pulled into Liverpool Street, my connection to the mainline and home.

Home, I thought, as I now shrank into a seat on the packed commuter train, hoping desperately that I wouldn’t chance upon any previous work colleagues and holding my holdall tight against
my chest. Home. The concept of ‘home’ felt very alien. Apart from the visit on Boxing Day, I hadn’t returned ‘home’ since June of the previous year, and it
didn’t feel like home any more. So much had happened to me. I’d had to cope with so many monumental, life-changing events all alone that I felt detached and disconnected from my mother
and stepfather.

It was dark by the time the train reached Rayleigh, the sky inky and star-spattered and the temperature bitingly cold. I walked for five minutes along the familiar route to the bungalow, and was
soon staring, sightless, into the curtained front rooms that sat beyond the empty flowerbeds. I stood and stared for some minutes, unable to find the strength to go in. How could I come back here?
How had my legs brought me here? It felt as if everything that had happened had been leading to this moment, this moment when I must mentally let go of my baby and slip quietly back into my old
life. Except how
could
I? I wanted to scream. I was in agony.

I opened the gate, walked up the path and pressed my finger against the doorbell, my breath making loose skeins of mist in the night air. My thoughts centred on the sickening apprehension I felt
about what kind of reception I might get after all these months away. But even in my traumatised, distressed state, I could not have anticipated the response I
did
get.

‘Oh,’ said my mother, opening the door to greet me. ‘You’re here. Would you like some dinner?’

I lay on my bed for an hour. Having told my mother ‘no’, I went straight to my room and lay down on the bed, exhausted, fully clothed and prostrate with grief. But
the oblivion I so badly craved eluded me. It felt so strange to be lying here alone, with nowhere else to go and nothing to distract me. There were no bottles to sterilise, no jugs to be collected,
no interminable wait on a musty thin mattress for the next time I’d be allowed to go down to the nursery and drink in the scent of my crying infant – nothing. I badly missed the comfort
and solace of the other girls. How would I get used to this? How would I bear it? Compared to the pain of childbirth, which had been intense and considerable, the pain of my heart shattering was as
physical an agony as I’d ever felt before, and I didn’t have a clue how to ease it.