Families and Friendships (3 page)

Now Vera told her what she believed to be true. ‘You see, darling, the lady whose baby you were at first couldn't keep you. She wasn't able to look after you, and so she decided that you should go to another mummy and daddy who would be able to look after you much better. And I think that the little teddy that you call Rosie was a special present from her, because I'm sure she really loved you very much.'

‘But you're my mummy and daddy now, aren't you?' asked the child.

‘Yes, of course we are. And we love you very much.'

‘And what happened to the lady?' Debbie always wanted to know the ins and outs of everything. ‘Didn't she want to see me again?'

‘I'm sure she thought about you a lot,' said Vera, ‘but she knew you'd be happy with us and that we'd take good care of you. She must have been very sad to lose you, but I'm sure she's happy again now. Maybe she has another little boy or girl now. But we've got you, haven't we? You were a very special baby, and now you're our own special little girl.'

‘I think that's a very nice story, Mummy,' said Debbie, in a matter-of-fact way. ‘And I hope the lady is happy now.'

Vera's eyes misted over a little as she kissed Debbie's cheek and tucked her up in bed. ‘Goodnight, darling,' she said. ‘Sleep tight, and God bless.'

‘Goodnight, Mummy,' she answered.

Vera was sure in her mind that Debbie would not worry about what she had been told. She was a very practical little miss sometimes. She had never been a clinging sort of child or one who cried very readily. She was affectionate and lovable to a degree, but Vera guessed she might not be over sentimental when she grew up. Already she was developing a mind of her own. Vera's mother said she was a ‘right little madam'.

She was well-loved, though, by all of them: by Vera and Stanley, Vera's parents, and her brother and sister and their families. She had brought a lot of joy into their lives.

Stanley and Vera's home, since 1950, had been in the little town of Whitesands Bay, on the Northumberland coast, not far from the city of Newcastle. The skyline of Northumberland was dominated by the symbols of the coal, iron and steel, and shipbuilding industries – the winding gear, slag heaps and the tall factory chimneys – that had made the region an important centre of the industrial revolution. But the landscape was predominantly rural, and within sight of the collieries with their rows of miners' houses there was green pastureland and pleasant farms and villages. Parts of the coastline were beautiful, with long sandy beaches and rocky cliffs around which the seaside resorts had developed. Whitesands Bay was such a one; a pleasant place to live, the nearest colliery being several miles away.

Many of the lads who had attended school with Stanley had become coal miners, or had gone to work in industry or at the docks. But Stanley's parents, Bill and Dora, had not wanted their son to go down the mine. Bill was a miner and suffered every so often with bronchitis, until he died in his early sixties with emphysema, soon after the end of the Second World War.

Bill and Dora had been blessed with only the one child, Stanley, and they had been anxious to do the very best they could for him. They lived in a mining village in a two-up, two-down cottage in a row that opened on to the street. At the rear, however, there was a small piece of land, communal to the row of cottages, and Bill loved to work on his plot when he was not too weary after his shift at the colliery. He grew vegetables – potatoes, carrots, cabbages, onions, lettuces – as much as the small plot would allow; and even managed to grow flowers in tubs – marigolds, Sweet Williams and night-scented stock – grown from seeds. Stanley enjoyed helping his father in what they liked to call their garden, although it was hardly worthy of the name. It was soon clear that Stanley had a natural bent for working with the soil, and his parents agreed that when he left school he should, ideally, work in the open air instead of down the mine.

Stanley and his father sometimes cycled out into the surrounding countryside on a Sunday afternoon, on a pair of rusty ramshackle old bicycles. There was hardly any traffic on the roads, especially on the country lanes, and they looked forward to their brief excursions into the green and pleasant farmlands, not all that far from the soot and grime of their own cobblestoned street.

There was one farm they passed that was more of an arable farm, concentrating on growing crops rather than rearing livestock. They kept a pig, and hens and a cockerel. Some of the hens were fattened for sale at Christmas time, and they also sold their own new-laid eggs. Bill and Stanley sometimes called at the farmhouse and bought a half dozen eggs, and so they got to know the farmer and his wife quite well.

The land was cultivated for the growing of potatoes, sugar beet, Brussels sprouts and other kinds of vegetables in their season. There was also a small orchard with apple and pear trees, and greenhouses where they grew tomatoes and cucumbers and flowers for sale, mainly chrysanthemums and dahlias. The farmer, Alec Pritchard, employed only a few full-time workers, but several more on a temporary basis when help was needed with the potato harvest or for picking the Brussels sprouts for the Christmas market. But some were permanent; and so it happened, fortuitously, that when Stanley was fourteen years old and ready to leave school, a vacancy occurred at the farm. One of the farm hands was getting married and moving away from the area. Alec had known Stanley for a couple of years and realized how much he loved the land and the open air. When he offered him a job at the farm Stanley and his parents were overjoyed at the turn of events.

He started his employment at the farm in 1929, and continued working there for eleven years until, in 1940, he was called up for war service. By this time he had married Vera, the girl he had been courting since their schooldays. He did not serve overseas, neither at the start of the war, which culminated in the evacuation from Dunkirk, or later in the D-Day landings. He spent his time at a camp in the north of England, not far from his home, by which time he had been promoted to the rank of sergeant. In some ways he felt cheated, always conscious that he could not say, in honesty, that he had ‘done his bit'. All the same, he hoped he had done a worthwhile job in charge of the supply depot, and he was delighted to resume his married life with Vera. They were hoping that very soon they might be blessed with a child.

In 1950, when they had been married for fourteen years, they both knew that they were ready for a change of scene. They had managed to scrape enough money together soon after their marriage to buy – or at least to secure a mortgage – on a little cottage not far from the mining village where they had been brought up. It was quite near to the farm where Stanley was still employed. He was by now the second-in-command there, virtually Alec's right-hand man. Vera's earnings as a shop assistant – she had worked in the general store in the village for many years – had helped with their finances. They had always been thrifty, and they felt it was time for them to make a move. And maybe, in a new environment, the child that they both longed for might appear at last.

Vera fancied a complete change. As a child she had loved the little town, Whitesands Bay, where her parents had taken her and her brother and sister for occasional visits, and she knew she would love to live there, and bring up the child they hoped to have in the clean fresh air of the seaside. Stanley was willing to go along with her idea, provided he could find a job there. He was experienced only in working on the land, and having worked in the open air for so long would not want to have an indoor job.

Luck was with them. Stanley applied for, and was offered a job in the parks department of the seaside town, helping to tend the flower beds and rock gardens that were a feature of the promenade, and the colourful displays at the roundabouts in the town. There was also a small park on the outskirts, at the very end of the promenade. They found a house that suited them and which they could afford; a two-bedroomed terraced house with a small paved area at the front, but with enough land at the rear to be cultivated as a garden, and even enough room for a small greenhouse.

And so it was there, in the May of 1952, where they brought their newly adopted baby daughter. They christened her Deborah Mary – the Mary after Vera's mother – but she was always known as Debbie.

Debbie had been born in Burnside House, a home where unmarried girls could stay for a few months before the birth of their babies, the children usually being given up for adoption. It was quite a pleasant place, all things considered; a large house in its own grounds in the Northumbrian countryside, midway between Newcastle upon Tyne and the market town of Hexham. It had once belonged to a wealthy family, then had been taken over by the nearby Methodist churches.

Vera and Stanley Hargreaves had been friendly with one of the auxiliary helpers there, a young woman named Claire Wagstaff. She was a near neighbour of theirs in the village where they had spent the first years of their married life, and they still kept in touch when they moved to Whitesands Bay which was not all that far away. When the longed for baby did not arrive and they had decided that they would like to adopt a child they approached Claire to see if it was possible for her to help them. She agreed that she would do what she could, and would put in a good word for them. The adoption was carried out legally through an accredited society; but it helped that Claire, with the agreement of the superintendent of the home, had recommended the couple as being an ideal choice for parents.

Claire, only thirty years old at the time, was nearer in age to the girls at the home than were some of the staff members. She sympathized with them and tried to understand their problems, although the nurses and helpers were warned not to get too friendly with the girls, especially with any one more than the others. Claire had, however, formed an affinity with Fiona Dalton who arrived at the home in the January of 1952. She understood that Fiona had been staying with an aunt and uncle for a while. Her parents, finding out about her pregnancy, had been shocked and ashamed of her and could not wait to banish her to relations in the far north of England, as far away from Leeds as possible. Fiona was such a nice girl, friendly and polite and so pretty. She often confided in Claire, who knew she would be heartbroken at parting from her baby. The girl had desperately longed to keep her daughter once she had set eyes on her, but with such intransigent parents it had been out of the question.

And so the baby girl was adopted by Vera and Stanley. Fiona had asked Claire if she knew where the baby would be going. She had answered evasively, but as truthfully as she could, that they were not allowed to say, not to anyone, especially not to the mother of the child, but that it was ‘for the best'. And she did assure Fiona that the baby would have a very good, loving home. Neither did Claire ever tell her friends, Vera and Stanley, the name or the whereabouts of the girl who had given birth to Debbie, except to say that she was a lovely girl who had been well – albeit strictly – brought up.

Sometimes, however, there was a happy ending when the girl, usually at the eleventh hour, was allowed to keep her baby. That was what had happened to Ginny, the girl who had been Fiona's particular friend when they were in Burnside House. Ginny's parents were adamant that she should not marry Arthur Gregson, the father of her baby. Ginny, the eldest child of a large family, was one of the chief breadwinners in the household, and it was expected that she would go back to her job as a shop assistant and carry on helping with the family finances. Besides, it wasn't as if Arthur was her boyfriend and they had been courting. He was just a friend of long standing who lived nearby; they had gone out, just the two of them, for a drink one night, and things had gone too far. Arthur, though, decided he wanted to do right by Ginny, and he was more than a little fond of her; they had been close friends for ages. Ginny didn't need much persuading to marry him, and he managed to wear down the resistance of her parents. Ginny's baby, a big healthy boy with his mother's ginger hair was born in April, 1952, just a month before Fiona gave birth to her little girl.

Claire Wagstaff and Ginny still saw one another occasionally as both families lived in the Tyneside area. So it was that Claire heard news of Fiona from time to time. She had been pleased to hear that she had got married, eventually, to a clergyman. And when she and Ginny met by chance one day, when they were both shopping in Newcastle, she was delighted to hear about Fiona's baby. The two women went to have a coffee together to catch up on the news.

‘How lovely!' said Claire. ‘And what a pretty name, Stella Jane. I'm really pleased for her. I still remember how distressed she was when she had to part with her baby. I felt sorry for her, going back to those sanctimonious parents of hers. I'm glad she managed to escape from them eventually.'

‘Actually, they were both killed in a coach crash a few years later,' said Ginny. ‘Fiona wrote to tell me. She was upset, of course, as she would be. I suppose they thought they were doing the right thing in making her give up the baby. That's what my parents wanted me to do until Arthur managed to get round them. But they think the world of Ryan now, and of Carl and Sharon.'

‘You were lucky,' said Claire, ‘that things worked out so well for you. Just as they have for Fiona, eventually. Do give her my love, won't you, when you write?'

‘Yes, of course I will. Fiona went to live with her gran, you know, when her parents died. I rather think she was closer to her grandmother than to her parents. She looked after the old lady until she died. She lived till she was ninety, so that was why Fiona was rather older when she got married. She moved up to Aberthwaite for a complete change of scene, and then, of course, she met Simon. He's lovely, is Simon! Real dishy! I was quite amazed when we met him at the wedding. Not a bit like you imagine a vicar would be. So handsome …'