A year after Melissa’s birth, Edward and I decided to part. This kind man who loved me was the first casualty of my legacy of abuse. My GP had advised me to start taking antidepressants again after Melissa’s birth when I confided in him that my marriage was in trouble—just to help me deal with the
stress, he said. I trusted in his knowledge, without fear of what might be happening to me. Then the headaches were back and my medication was increased. The GP told me the pills were safe to take longterm and I believed him.
Life was tough in one way, but oh so good in others. My time with Melissa, my precious daughter, was wonderful. She only had to put her arms around my neck and everything else paled into insignificance. I didn’t have much money but I managed. I took an evening job to help pay bills, working at a local pub where I knew the landlady while a neighbour looked after Melissa.
One evening a man called Larry walked me home from work, and when he asked me out for a drink I accepted. We saw each other for about six months and then, one evening after going to a dinner dance and having a few drinks, we made love. My biggest surprise was that I could make love. No problems, no hysteria. I suppose it was the alcohol. I couldn’t make love with my husband, a man who loved me, so why should I have imagined I could do it with anyone else? Because of this, I wasn’t taking any precautions, so I went straight off to see my GP the next morning. I had the sense to realise that if it happened once it was likely to happen again, so I was put on the Pill.
I enjoyed Larry’s company. We went dancing and socialised in a way I hadn’t experienced before. He was seventeen years older and seemed proud to have me on his arm. Then it happened. It couldn’t be. I couldn’t be. Could I?
Just before Christmas 1970 I was sick one morning, and when I realised that my period was late I got scared. Could I be
pregnant? From one act of sex? Of course I could. I had only made love properly on one occasion with my husband and I became pregnant. Now, two and a bit years later, I had sex for a second time and got pregnant again. I asked Larry to come round that evening, unsure how he would take the news.
‘How could you let this happen?’ he demanded furiously, as if I had done ‘this’ on purpose. ‘How could you be so stupid?’ He ranted on for a while and then growled, ‘You can’t have it. I won’t let you. You’ll have to see your GP and ask for a termination.’
He reminded me of someone, the way he growled at me, the expression on his face. He reminded me of someone I didn’t want to remember. I was scared at that point, seeing the nasty and evil side of him, just as there had been in Bill.
He was asking me to get rid of a baby, our baby. I tried to say that I couldn’t even think of taking a baby’s life. I tried to say that it would be OK and that I would look after this baby on my own. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t say anything. I was in shock. So I couldn’t speak, and he left.
I hoped that after having a night to think things through, Larry would come round to being OK with the situation. OK with us having this child and bringing it up together. I prayed that I could keep my unborn baby, prayed that everything would come right. But hoping and praying had never been enough in my life. Once again God wasn’t listening.
During the following days I heard nothing from Larry, then after about a week he arrived at my door saying he was taking me to see a doctor who could authorise my having a termination on the National Health.
I went along to see the doctor with him but everything that was said made me realise more strongly that I couldn’t do it. It was against everything I believed in. I wanted to have this baby. On the way home I told Larry what I had decided.
‘I can’t do it, can’t have a termination. It wouldn’t be right.’
His face contorted and went scarlet. ‘Right for who?’ he growled. ‘It wouldn’t be right for anyone if you had a baby who had no father!’
‘But it would have a father and a mother. It would have us.’ I was sobbing. ‘It would be loved.’
‘No, that’s where you’re wrong. I wouldn’t love it. I don’t want it,’ he shouted. ‘If you continue with this pregnancy, you’re on your own. And don’t think you can come to me for money. I won’t give you a penny of my hard-earned cash!’ He slammed the car door and drove away, leaving me on the pavement outside my house, shaking and sobbing.
I was on my own again, hurt and confused. Perhaps things would always go wrong in my life. Perhaps I deserved this pain and confusion.
I continued to harbour a secret hope that Larry would come round once he’d thought it through. I was still working in the pub and I knew he would be there for the New Year celebrations. Surely this would be when he came back to me? When the clock chimed twelve, he would come over. While everyone else was sharing New Year kisses, he would come over and kiss me and tell me everything would be OK.
What was it with me and hope? Why did I never learn? New Year came and my dreams went. The father of my baby danced
with and kissed another woman and left me alone to watch. So that was that.
For the first few months of the pregnancy I hadn’t told anyone about it, but just after New Year Mum asked me to come and stay in her house to look after Bobby while they went away on a trip and I found myself telling her about my predicament. Perhaps she would understand. After all, I had been conceived outside marriage. Maybe this would give us a common bond.
But why should she sympathise? What was in it for her?
‘You stupid, stupid girl,’ she snapped. ‘You’ll have to get rid of it. What will people say? What will they think?’ She was almost talking to herself now, having dismissed me and my worries as she paced around the room. ‘You will have to get rid of it and then stay away for a while.’
‘I can’t do that. It wouldn’t be right,’ I said softly, trying to calm things down. ‘I don’t believe in abortion.’
‘Typical. That’s just typical of you, having so-called high standards and ethics. Well, they won’t do you any good now, my girl. Not believing in abortion won’t make the alternative OK.’ She stood in front of me with her arms folded and I felt as though I was seven again. Scared, confused and unloved. ‘If you keep this bastard, you are on your own!’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How could she call my baby that name? I wanted to remind her of how I came about. I wanted to say to this woman that I would be different from her, I would love my child, no matter how he or she was conceived. I wanted to scream at her, all of these things.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was at my lowest ebb and had no energy to fight her. So I would be on my own. Nothing new there, then. That’s how it had always been. At least I wasn’t totally alone now. I had Melissa, my beloved daughter, and I was naïve enough to think that everything would turn out right.
I still went round to the house sometimes to see Dad but Mum insisted that I check first that she didn’t have any visitors because she was embarrassed for her friends to see my condition. I found out later that she had been telling people I had a cancerous tumour and that’s why my belly was swollen. This was just one of the despicable lies she told.
I stopped working in the pub and stopped taking my antidepressants, just in case they harmed my unborn child, but soon I was suffering from horrible withdrawal symptoms that lasted for most of the pregnancy: I had terrifying dreams, hallucinations, panic attacks, and sometimes I ran from room to room crying hysterically. When I told my GP about this, he said it was just the stress. He knew my marriage was over and how this pregnancy had come about. I had been fine during my first pregnancy, when I was happily married and looking forward to the future, but he said my symptoms now were due to my changed circumstances. He didn’t relate it to the fact that the antidepressants I had been on before I got pregnant this second time were much stronger than the ones I’d been taking before. He refused to believe there could be side effects when I stopped taking them. He was very concerned about my ability to cope, though, so he persuaded me to see the church adoption service, just in case.
I was determined to keep my baby, but I was so weak and tired of struggling that I went along for a meeting with them—not intending to let anyone take my child away, but to keep everyone off my back.
I was assigned a social worker since I was a single mum. This lady was very kind but told me straight how it was. She pointed out that I would have no money to bring up the new baby and that the maintenance I got from Edward for my daughter would not be enough for two children. She made me look at the reality of the situation and told me that my little girl and my unborn child would both suffer if I kept my baby. I couldn’t take it in. My thinking was distorted because of the benzodiazepine withdrawal, and my sense of reason was nonexistent. My life seemed to be a constant foggy battle. She was telling me that I had to choose between my precious baby girl and my soon-to-be-born baby. She persuaded me that the best thing I could do, if I loved my children, was to let the baby go for adoption.
One day, when I was eight months pregnant, the lady from the church adoption service called. She brought me a layette to take into hospital, a dozen terry towelling nappies and a bottle. She talked non-stop about the people who would give my as-yet-not-here baby a loving home.
But
I
could give my baby a home! I would love this unwanted-by-his-father baby. I thought this but didn’t have the strength to say it out loud. I felt defeated. Defeated and desperately lonely.
W
hen I went into labour, Edward moved into my little bungalow to look after Melissa while I was in hospital. The birth wasn’t too bad this time, but the placenta wouldn’t come away. The young nurse holding the little scrap of life that had just been taken from my body didn’t know what to do with him when the midwife asked for her help, so she placed him in my arms. He was a boy, and so beautiful. I held on for fear of someone taking him away from me. The midwife rushed over after the birth was complete and admonished the poor young nurse, taking my son out of my arms again. The arms that were trying so hard to hold on.
They took him away, but the next day I managed to wander out of the ward and down to the nursery, where I peered through the windows until I found him. Taking care that no one saw me, or so I thought, I went in. He looked so small. Small and beautiful. And then I saw the name tag. It read ‘Unknown’ and that broke my heart. He wasn’t unknown. I
knew him. I had known him for nine long months. The lack of a name on his tag made it sound as though he didn’t belong anywhere.
I reached in and lifted him out of the crib. Suddenly the nursery door was flung open, he was wrenched away from me and I was chaperoned back to my room. I couldn’t cry. What would tears have done? They had never helped me before, so I didn’t cry.
The next morning a nurse told me that the social worker had come to take my baby away. She had in her hands the outfit I had brought for him to go home in—a tiny white broderie anglaise romper suit and little white socks. She placed these in my hands then left and came back in with a carrycot holding my precious son. I couldn’t move, couldn’t look.
‘Would you like me to dress him?’ she asked.
I couldn’t speak. I was afraid of what might come out of my mouth. But nothing would have, as there were no words to describe how I was feeling. Or was I feeling? I don’t know. After a while, I nodded yes.
Then the social worker appeared. I was shaking at that point; no tears, just falling apart inside.
‘I want you to read the words on this card out loud,’ she said brusquely.
I looked at the card. The words that shouted out at me were ‘I declare that I hand my child over to the care of the Church of England Adoption Society.’
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t say the words that took away all my rights over my baby son. I just couldn’t.
I had chosen this particular society because I thought they would be the best. Although God hadn’t listened to me as a child, I had always remembered ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me’ from my Sunday school days. I thought God would listen this time and do what was best for my baby.
My head was swirling. I felt hot and faint. This can’t be best.
The social worker was becoming impatient. ‘Come on, time’s ticking along. You have to take baby out of the carrycot and hand him over to me. It’s for the best, you know that.’
For the best? Best for whom? Doesn’t she know my heart is breaking? Can’t she hear it?
The ward sister knew how hard this was for me because we’d had a chat after the birth. I looked up at her, pleading for help.
‘She doesn’t need to do that,’ the sister said. ‘I’ll read the words for Cassie and she can touch the blanket. That will be enough.’ She sounded firm, as though the decision was made.
‘I suppose that will have to do,’ came the reply. ‘Let’s just get on with it.’
I was shaking my head, silently sobbing—no tears, just silent sobs in my heart. The ward sister took my hand and placed it on the blanket that was keeping my baby warm, and she read the words from the card.
And then he was gone.
I don’t remember what happened next. I just don’t remember.
Some time later, I was taken into a room to register my son’s birth. I was in a daze. I couldn’t take it all in. The registrar asked his name.
‘Jack,’ I whispered. ‘It’s Jack.’
I didn’t expect the next question; I wasn’t prepared for it.
‘His father’s name?’ he asked, in a matter-of-fact way.
He waited. I waited. What for? What did I think was going to happen?
‘Do you have the permission of his father to name him on the birth certificate?’ he asked. ‘Do you have written permission?’
Of course I didn’t. Larry hadn’t accepted our baby, so no, I didn’t have his permission.
‘Then we will have to put Father Unknown.’ He continued to write as he spoke. I felt dead inside. After I got home from hospital, the next few days were a blur. I was dangerously depressed and my GP put me back on the tablets, which made me a little stronger. But it was as though there was a knife in my heart. I had this heavy burning pain inside that never left me. I couldn’t sleep or eat. The only thing that kept me going was the need to look after my daughter.