The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers (6 page)

Theydon Bois was a small place, which had just a few shops that sat together in the middle of a residential area down the hill. There was a sweet shop, a chemist and a small grocer’s.
I’d come armed with a list of things for a few of the other girls and, when I saw the bakery, a plan to buy a cake for myself and Mary, as I’d been told the ones they sold were lovely.
I also had a passion for peaches then, so I intended to get some, though they were very expensive at that time of year and would have to be just an occasional treat.

The world now took a generally dim view of me and straight away I had my first proper experience of how I was perceived. I entered the bakery and waited patiently while the lady behind the
counter served the person before me, chatting in a very friendly fashion all the while, exchanging pleasantries about the late September weather. But when she turned to serve me, it seemed she took
one look at my bump, and her manner changed abruptly and completely.

‘Yes?’ she said sharply. ‘Can I help you?’

Her tone seemed to suggest she’d rather do anything but.

I pointed to the cakes – white iced buns – that I wanted. ‘Yes,’ I said politely. ‘Two of those, please.’

She pulled a box from a stack and assembled it deftly, then picked up tongs and placed the cakes in it, side by side. ‘Anything else?’ she barked, placing the box on the counter.

I shook my head, handed over the money to pay and thanked her once, then again when she gave me my change.

There was another customer behind me now and, even as I spoke, the woman’s eyes slid past me, her sour expression suddenly transformed. ‘Ah, good afternoon!’ she began
cheerfully. ‘What can I get for you today?’ I slunk from the shop, my cheeks burning.

It was the same in the next shop I went into, the grocer’s: no overt hostility, exactly, just this overwhelming sense that I was someone no one much cared to associate with. I left the
shops and toiled back up the hill on heavy legs, aware of my baby squirming inside and my bags biting into my fingers.

But what else had I expected? I thought, as I walked the last few yards of the gravelled drive. The convent was imposing, both architecturally
and
symbolically. Everyone locally must have
known, or figured out, what kind of occupation the nuns of the ironically named ‘Franciscan Missionary of Divine Motherhood’ were engaged in – at least in this branch of their
missionary. There would be a steady stream of pregnant young ‘wives’ shopping here, of course. I was naive to suppose my ring would fool anyone.

With my experience of the quiet but chilly reception of some of the local businesses fresh in my mind, I resolved to learn to accept my situation. I was incarcerated in the
convent – if not physically, at least emotionally – until my baby was born and I’d given it away. Then I would be allowed to slip quietly back into the life I’d led before,
reintegrating into ‘polite’ society without anyone knowing why I’d been away.

That there was no alternative available to me was clear. I had come to accept that keeping my baby – always a dream – was something that wasn’t going to happen. In fact,
nothing could have been made more clear to me by my mother. As a good Catholic girl, I must do the good Catholic thing: accept the kindness of the nuns who deigned to care for us both and leave
them to sort out the mess I had got myself into. Then – another thing for which I knew I must be grateful – I must give my poor child to a good Catholic family, who could care for it
and bring it up properly.

Like many a girl in my situation at that time, I didn’t dare question this. How could I? To mention keeping the baby as an option would have been unthinkable. As an unmarried mother I
would be shunned and unable to find employment; I would therefore compound my sin by committing an innocent child to life as a destitute bastard.

So I accepted it, but it made communication with my mother difficult, because while, on the outside, I
did
accept that this was best option for my unborn infant, every fibre of my being
was opposed to it. I’d spoken to my mother on the phone only sporadically since I’d gone to stay with June, and I continued to have strained and pointless conversations with her from
the convent’s phone at the end of the hallway.

If I was sad to be having bland conversations with a mother who knew all too well where I was, other girls had much harder circumstances to bear. Like Mary, several of the girls were living even
more of a lie than I was. These were girls who’d fled situations in which no one in their families had found out what had happened, and who’d had to construct big complicated lies for
their loved ones about the reason for their often sudden departure. Like Mary, they would have to write letters home, chattily talking about jobs they weren’t doing, people they weren’t
meeting and a social life that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

It was understandable, then, that thrown together as fellow outcasts, we banded together for support. And at least we had one period every day when we were left to our own devices and could
relax together, away from the nuns’ relentless displeasure at our very existence.

There was a common room on the ground floor, a big shabby place with a large number of lumpy mismatched chairs and an old sofa; a flickering old black and white television stood in a corner.
Every evening after tea a number of us would congregate there – mostly pregnant girls rather than new mums, because the latter were generally too exhausted – to swap stories about our
other lives, the ones we’d been forced to leave, and to support each other through the inevitable admissions of distress.

A lot of the conversations were about our bumps. We would discuss how big we were and how big our unborn babies might be, and we would put our hands on each other’s stomachs to feel them
moving. We also speculated about where we might be when our waters broke and, ignorant as most of us were about such matters, what the business of giving birth might be like.

‘Did you hear about Zena?’ Mary asked me one evening, a couple of weeks into my stay. Zena was one of the other pregnant girls who, unlike the rest of us, seemed more bored and fed
up than distressed by her plight. There was a lot of muttering, too, about how little work she had to do and how the nuns didn’t treat her like they did us. She was a model, Mary had told us,
and was visited regularly by her unborn child’s father. He was a wealthy married man who was supporting her through the business of dealing with their little ‘inconvenience’.

‘He brought round a huge bouquet of flowers this morning, by all accounts,’ she said. She looked disgusted. ‘And fruit. All right for some, eh? But paying her off is what
it’s really all about, don’t you think?’

‘And did you see Sister Roc around him earlier?’ added Linda. ‘Fawning all over him she was, like he was someone so important. When the fact is he’s no better than any of
us.
Worse
. Married, and with no intention of getting divorced either. Makes me sick.’

‘He gives them money,’ one of the other girls chipped in. ‘For the convent. That’s why Zena doesn’t have to do half what we do. That’s why she can spend her
time sitting around worrying about her stretch marks. One rule for one and one rule for others. Such hypocrisy, when he’s just as—’

‘Hey,’ called one of the girls from the other side of the common room. ‘Hush up.
Ready Steady Go!
is about to start.’

We all trooped across the room to gather expectantly round the screen. Such programmes were one of the few remaining pleasures that connected us to the lives we’d had before – even
if they did also highlight how different our lives had become.

‘Oh, The Beatles!’ Linda squealed, as ‘Twist and Shout’ came on. ‘I just love them; I just love them; I just love them!’ She leapt up again and immediately
began dancing.

‘Oh, me too!’ agreed another girl, getting up and pushing a couple of the armchairs out of the way to make an impromptu dance floor. I got up and helped her, and before long we were
all jigging about in front of the television, the reality of our lumbering, heavily pregnant states forgotten, as for a moment at least we could forget where and who we were. When the song ended
and they launched into a second number, we were so excited that we all cheered in unison, which was probably what alerted the Reverend Mother.

With our backs to the door, it took a while for us to realise she was there. It was only thanks to the enthusiastic gyrations of one girl that, one by one, we turned to see the Reverend Mother
standing in the open doorway, one hand on the doorknob, the other raised in rebuke, her index finger rigid.

‘Stop that at
once
!’ she barked, crossing the floor, her face pink. ‘What, in the name of all that’s holy, do you think you’re doing?!’

No one dared speak, much less move.

‘Angela!’ she snapped at me, causing me to jump. ‘Turn that television off immediately! And you, Mary, put those chairs back where they belong! And Ann – all those
cushions. Immediately!’

She stood glowering as we scurried around reassembling the furniture. ‘Have you no shame?’ she said. ‘Have you all forgotten why you’re here?’ We stood, heads hung
now, short of breath and perspiring, none of us daring to reply. ‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘And you’d do very well to. Because it’s this sort of wickedness that got
you all here in the first place! And it’s only by the grace of God and the kindness of others that you
are
here, being cared for in your shame. How
dare
you behave in such a
fashion in this place! You are here to atone, and you’d do well to remember that!’

I was standing closest to her, and could smell talc overlaid with that faint whiff of mustiness that seemed to cling tenaciously to all the nuns’ habits. She looked me in the eye, and I
could see how tired and old she was. ‘Have you no
shame
?’ she said again. Then she turned and stalked out.

It was only when we heard the door opposite bang shut that any of us dared to breathe out.

‘Old witch,’ Linda said.

‘Hateful crone,’ muttered someone else.

No one laughed. Mary burst into tears.

Lying in bed that night, I wrestled with the paradox of my situation. It seemed my world had at the same time both expanded and contracted: expanded in that I was living
through such a life-changing experience, and contracted in that it was happening in this closed, claustrophobic place, where I was being treated like a child – a wicked child.

Thank God for the other girls and our growing bonds of friendship. As, in the small hours of the night, when the chattering had ceased, I realised I’d never been so alone.

‘A
h, Angela. There you are. I’ve been wanting to catch you. D’you think you could do me a really big favour?’

It was early October now and I’d gone into the nursery to collect the empty bottles after the mid-morning feed. Ann, now one of the new mothers, was still there, in the middle of changing
her baby. She was at the far end, by the last cot, which was always reserved for the newest baby. I’d not spoken to her since she’d returned from the hospital, as we didn’t often
mix with the new mothers, but she’d always been friendly and kind to me before.

‘Of course,’ I said, as I made my way round to her, picking up the water jugs and empties. ‘How can I help?’

‘I have to go to a funeral on Friday,’ she said, deftly doing up her baby daughter’s nappy. She looked impossibly tiny, dark pink and so delicate, yet Ann seemed to handle her
more like putty than porcelain. She cooed at her and soothed her as she folded the heavy towelling.

‘I heard about that,’ I said, as I reached her. ‘I’m so sorry.’

She smiled wanly at me. I could see she’d been crying. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But the thing is that I’m going to be gone for most of the day, so I was wondering if you could look after Louise for me. Do her feeds – there’s only two to do – and
change her, of course. Would that be okay?’

I looked down at the tiny brand-new human being on the changing mat, so small and yet so unfathomable and unpredictable. It seemed impossible that in a matter of weeks I would have one of my
own.

Ann lifted Louise up and pressed the tiny cheek to her own. ‘She’s no trouble,’ she said, smiling at her daughter. ‘You’re an angel, aren’t you?’

I picked up the last of the empty bottles, and tried to imagine myself with a baby that small and helpless in my arms. It was a huge responsibility, but at least it would be practice. ‘Of
course I will,’ I said. ‘That’ll be fine.’

I’d been in the convent for three weeks and I was heavily pregnant, my enormous stomach alien in proportion to the rest of me. I’d always been slender and
light-footed; now I felt swollen and exhausted, my ankles protesting painfully. Getting sufficient sleep was becoming more difficult. The baby I carried would be born soon, and it too would be one
of those tiny pink beings in the nursery, dwarfed between the bars of the enormous metal cots, cots that were designed for much bigger, older babies; newborns at the convent never saw cribs.

I knew almost nothing about babies. I’d barely seen any or known any. Though Ray had two children – my niece and nephew – they’d been born in South Africa, so I’d
never even met them, let alone spent time with them or cared for them. The closest member of our immediate family in England, my Auntie Ellen, my mother’s sister, had not been able to have
children of her own, so I didn’t have any cousins. As she too had rashly embarked on a ‘mixed’ marriage (her husband was a Protestant), it was forbidden for her to adopt.

I hadn’t seen my Auntie Ellen since before I’d found out I was pregnant. My mother broke the news to her, and I didn’t need much imagination to guess at her reaction, as
she’d so often expressed her bitterness about not being able to have children of her own. She naturally felt my pregnancy was unspeakably sinful and unfair.

Louise was to be entrusted to my care for only a few hours, but when Friday came around and Ann left for her funeral, I was petrified. ‘You’ll be
fine
,’ Mary reassured
me. ‘It’s all instinctive.’ But it was scant reassurance, because when I told her I’d never held a baby before, she looked at me incredulously. ‘What –
never
?’