The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers (10 page)

As my baby lay there beside me, asleep and untroubled in his crib, for perhaps the first time since he’d been born, I studied Paul properly. His mop of hair, so very thick and dark,
mesmerised me. As did his eyes – those questioning eyes newborn babies always seem to have – they were so blue against his skin, which was olive, just like mine. He’d got that
colouring from the Spanish blood on my mother’s side of the family. In fact, I could see so much of myself and my family in him that it took my breath away. He really was an extension of me.
This was very much
my
baby.

He had an array of little sounds he’d make, peculiar just to him, and I wondered the same thing any new mother would when he made them: what did they mean? Was he hungry? Was he content?
Was he sleepy? I also felt the same fears that any novice mother would: that my ignorance of how to care for him might distress him. Though, of course, Mary had been right: looking after your own
newborn
is
instinctive, and in reality we were completely in tune.

I would look at him and marvel at everything I had gone through to get him – all the unhappiness and the guilt and the pain of giving birth – which now seemed unimportant, a world
away, forgotten. But one fact was inescapable: the biggest ordeal was yet to come. Though my baby and I would be parted in a few weeks, there was no going back for me emotionally; I was
Paul’s mother and I would love him forever.

I
felt the weight of the coming adoption pressing down on me like a death sentence during those first hours and days. I had given birth to my son
knowing only too well that soon he would no longer be mine. Not surprisingly, then, I cherished our brief time in the lying-in room at Loreto Convent, perhaps even more than I might have done if
I’d had the luxury of knowing a shared future stretched out ahead of us. I couldn’t allow myself to entertain that prospect, even as I cradled this tiny piece of me in my arms.

I was happy to be cocooned from the outside world, which carried on without me. I would know nothing of the assassination of President Kennedy until a full week after it had happened – not
until I was moved into the dormitory with the other mothers. It was as if time wanted to be kind to me, just for a little while, and stand still.

But there
was
something I did find out about – something shocking. That first evening, while Paul was sleeping, I made my way painfully downstairs to phone Emmie and John. I was so
anxious to hear the sound of a loving voice, to talk to someone I knew would want to hear about my baby. It was Emmie who answered, and right away she seemed unexpectedly emotional.

‘Oh, Angela!’ she cried, when she realised who it was. ‘I’m so, so glad to hear your voice! How
are
you?’

‘Tired,’ I said. ‘In quite a lot of pain from my stitches, but otherwise I’m—’

‘Oh, you poor, poor thing. Are you still in hospital? Because I was speaking to John, and he wasn’t sure if they’d let you out yet—’

‘No, no. They brought me back here this morning,’ I told her. ‘They only kept me in overnight.’

‘Oh, that’s such a relief. I did speak to your mother this morning and she told me the nuns had said you were doing okay, but, well, as you can imagine, I’ve been thinking
about you every single
minute.
We were all so worried about you, and the baby, of course, and they hardly told us anything about what had been going on . . . ’

‘Worried about what?’ I said, confused by both her words and her anxious tone. ‘Who didn’t tell you anything?’

‘The hospital! I mean we drove all that way, and then—’

‘Drove where? To the hospital? When was this?’

‘When you were in labour yesterday, of course.’ There was a pause. ‘Didn’t you know?’

I told her I didn’t. I was reeling. Emmie had actually been at the hospital? How could I not have remembered that?

‘I have no memory of that at
all
,’ I told her. ‘How can that be? I mean, I know I was in a lot of pain, but I hadn’t been given any drugs or anything . .
.’

‘But you wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘Because we didn’t actually see you.’

I was very confused now. ‘But why were you there anyway? You didn’t know when I was going in, did you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not till your mum rang.’

‘Mum rang?’

‘Yes, she called John when the hospital called her. She needed to be driven there—’

‘To the hospital? While I was in labour?’

‘Yes. God, how did you not know this?’

‘I knew nothing about it, Emmie. Nothing at all.’

‘Well, you were in a pretty bad way, by all accounts. That’s why they asked her to go there.’

‘They were that worried?’ I was finding this difficult to take in. ‘I had no idea.’

‘Apparently so. That’s what your mum told us, anyway. So we picked her up and drove her there, but by the time we arrived they told us that everything was okay again. That the baby
had been born and you were both safe and well.’

‘And they wouldn’t let you
see
me?’

‘They said you were having stitches.’ She paused again. ‘And, well, to be honest, your mum felt . . . well, that maybe you would need to sleep after that, and . . . well, it
was difficult for her, obviously. So we brought her home again.’ She paused. ‘Sweetheart, you know how it is . . .’

I did know how it was only too well. If my mother had come to see me, then everyone would
know
she was my mother. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But, even so, you would have
thought, under the circumstances . . .’

‘I know, sweetie, I know.’ Emmie paused again. She probably didn’t know what to say to me. And I understood. What
could
she say? ‘Anyway,’ she went on
finally. ‘I’ve been keeping up to date – I don’t have the number there, and I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to call, which is why I’m so glad to hear from you . .
. oh, it’s
so
good to hear from you, I can’t tell you, Angela. So, tell me all about your lovely boy. I’ve been
dying
to hear. What does he look like? Is he
gorgeous? What have you called him?’

Going back to the lying-in room after speaking to Emmie, I wasn’t sure what to feel. I had given birth only once – I had nothing with which to compare it –
but to find out that the hospital had deemed it necessary to summon my mother, as next of kin, was a lot to take in. How bad
had
things been? No one had said a word to me about it –
not a word. And I doubted anyone would now it was all over. Unless I demanded to see my medical records, I realised it was unlikely I’d ever know what had really happened.

Far more shocking was the realisation that my mother
had
been there at the hospital, only a couple of walls away from me perhaps. She had been there, and even then couldn’t bring
herself to come and see me, to check on me and reassure herself I was okay, to offer a crumb of comfort when I had so badly craved one. She’d been content to be told that all was well and
then leave. I felt stunned, tearful, angry. How could shame be a more powerful emotion than maternal love?

Perhaps because of this – or maybe it would have happened anyway – I retreated into my own little world of maternal love instead. I would not have Paul for long, but for as long as I
did have him I would love him and care for him with every fibre of my being. I wanted nothing more than to stay in my cocoon with him, because every thought of leaving it was accompanied by fear of
a world that disapproved of me, judged me and wouldn’t accept my right to motherhood, and of a future that wouldn’t include my baby. The convent stopped feeling like a place of
punishment or atonement, but instead became a place of safety, where my baby could be acknowledged and was cared for. As unlikely as it was, it had become a home.

It was so intense, that brief time we had together, my baby and I. It was a time in which the hours blurred into days almost without me noticing, a paradoxical mixture of intense emotion and
love and the endurance of equally intense pain.

Because I’d had so many stitches, both internally and externally, even the simplest things, such as walking and sitting, were excruciatingly painful, and would be, I realised, for many
days. I also had a new problem to contend with: my milk had come in, an agony that soon became equally excruciating. But the pain could not, under any circumstances, be alleviated as nature
intended, because breastfeeding was strictly forbidden at the convent. I don’t know if this was because the nuns had decided it would make the coming separation harder for both mother and
baby or because it was the prevailing fashion of the day – at that time, formula milk was marketed as a form of liberation, and young mothers were taking to it in droves. Perhaps it was
another form of atonement that was designed to punish the mother but also punished the baby. I still don’t know. Like every other mother further up the line, I simply accepted that
breastfeeding was not an option. It hurt to have a part of my body trying to do one thing, but being made to do another, despite the pills I was given to dry up my milk. In the meantime, I just had
to endure it.

Despite all the pain and discomfort, not to mention my complete ignorance of how to hold him and what to do for him, my little son and I enjoyed moments of pure bliss. Sister Teresa had taken
over my milk kitchen duties and I left the room only for meals during those first four days. I even received my mother and stepfather there when they came to see us on the second day.

That visit was incredibly difficult. It would have been naive of me, I suppose, to expect it to be any different, even if I hadn’t known about her coming to the hospital. My mother was now
coming to visit the daughter she’d felt she had no choice but to abandon to her fate all those months back; the daughter who was caring for a newborn grandchild that she would never see
again.

‘How are you, Angela?’ she said stiffly as she entered.

‘I’m fine,’ I told her, following up her platitude with my own.

I had decided that I would only mention her visit to the hospital if she did, and I suspected she would not. And she didn’t – not in words. Nevertheless, on that day, she did express
real emotions about what had happened to me, emotions other than disappointment and anger at my folly and shame.

‘May I see him?’ she asked, gesturing towards the cot beyond the bed. So formal. So not like a grandmother.

I nodded, and she went around to peer in at my sleeping child. ‘He’s beautiful,’ she said, her voice cracking as she spoke. Though I could only see her face in profile, I knew
she was struggling not to cry.

It hit me then, hard: I really was going to have to give up my baby. Up until the moment my mother broke down on seeing her little grandson, I had nursed a hope – albeit one that was
deeply buried and never, ever voiced – that she would have a change of heart about him being adopted and admit she was wrong about what was best for both of us; that somehow we’d find a
way for me to keep him; that she’d support me and help me and the nightmare could end.

But it was clear to me, watching her sniffing and dabbing at her wet eyes with a hankie, that there was no change of heart now nor would there ever be. She didn’t
want
to be his
grandmother. It was a role that she’d relinquished. She was crying because the reality of things had hit home for her too. She was crying in anticipation of my loss.

My stepfather spoke little and was only a stiff, sombre presence in the corner that day. I think he had long ago settled into his position that none of this was anything to do with him –
with either one of them, in fact.

When Paul was five days old Sister Teresa removed my stitches, snipping them and slipping them all out, one by one, as she did for all the new mothers. It was probably just as
well that I couldn’t see what she was doing, because she had very shaky fingers and extremely poor eyesight. I shut my eyes and tried not to visualise what was happening too much. I hated the
thought of her seeing such an intimate part of me. And I suspect, given her calling, she found the task odious too.

This milestone marked the day when my safe little bubble burst and the sound of the ticking clock grew louder. Once my stitches had been removed and my wounds were declared healed, I was moved
up to the big attic room to sleep with the other mothers.

Paul was baptised in the convent chapel by the visiting priest, and immediately afterwards transferred to the nursery full time. Affixed to the cot was a blue cardboard tag, one of a batch
provided by Cow and Gate, who made the baby formula we used at the convent, and on it was written ‘Paul Brown’; beneath that his birth weight was recorded: ‘8 lb 12 oz’.

My tiny son had been by my side, except for a part of the night, since I’d returned. Now we would begin the new daily routine that would see us through until the day we both left.

That first night, the first when I was up in the attic room while he was in the nursery, was incredibly difficult to bear. It was bad enough being separated from him for so long, but being able
to hear him crying for me, specifically, amid the general cacophony – something I hadn’t anticipated – made it nigh on impossible to sleep. All I wanted was to do what any mother
would do: go to him, pick him up, comfort and cuddle him. I wished so hard that things could be different. But apart from what was necessary for feeding and changing, all contact with my baby was
now forbidden.

At least I was back with the other girls again and could benefit from their empathy and support. The room for the mothers was a very large one on the top floor, which ran the length of the
convent, with ceilings that sloped at either end. It resembled a soldiers’ billet: a dozen beds, with a row of six down either side, each with its own bedside locker and a big empty space in
between. The comparisons didn’t end there. Given the diversity of occupants, some would be neat and tidy, others very messy, and the room would be inspected regularly by Sister Teresa or,
occasionally, the Reverend Mother. Equally regularly, girls would be singled out and publicly berated for their slovenly ways and their generally poor characters.