The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers (3 page)

‘Oh, you’ve more than enough to deal with. We
all
have,’ she said. ‘But we must hurry.’ She jumped up. ‘There’s room for your case underneath
your bed – just, I think. Here, let me help you. There you go. Sister Teresa will be waiting, and she doesn’t like to be kept waiting. I can show you the bathroom as we go.’

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked, as we left the little room – my new home – and retraced our steps along the corridor.

‘A week,’ she said. ‘A very
long
week.’

‘And what job have they given you?’

‘Cleaning,’ she said. And then she grinned at me. ‘So whatever the state of our souls, at least the floors shine.’

‘How is it? I mean, generally. Is it as bad here as it seems?’

We’d turned a corner now. Mary put her hand on an adjacent doorknob. ‘You’ve experience of nuns?’

I nodded. ‘Oh, yes. I went to a convent school.’

‘So think that, only more so, since we’re all in a state of mortal sin now and must atone. Anyway,
voilà
. Grand, don’t you think?’

I peered in. As with everything here, the bathroom was basic. A large basin, a toilet and a chipped enamelled cast-iron bath sat on a black and white tiled floor, surrounded by plain grey-white
walls. You could feel the cold coming off them. I touched one. It was icy. The bathroom was shared, Mary told me, by about twenty of us.

‘So it’s a bit of a scrum in the mornings,’ she said. ‘Not that anyone wants to linger, as you can imagine.’

We then returned down a back staircase to the ground floor. Here we took a route through another maze of passages until we came to the milk kitchen and, as promised, Sister Teresa. She was
standing by a long Formica worktop, filling baby feeding bottles with formula milk, wearing a large apron and starched cotton over-sleeves to protect her habit from splashes.

‘Now then,’ she said to me, once Mary had been dismissed and had returned to our room. ‘As Mary’s probably told you, all the girls who come here have duties assigned to
them, and you will be working here in the milk kitchen. Starting tomorrow.’

Sister Teresa then went on to describe, in dizzying detail, the nature of the duties I’d be expected to carry out, which sounded like they would dominate most of the waking hours of every
day. Pregnant mothers, who did not yet have babies to care for, could be under no illusions. ‘Here in the convent,’ Sister Teresa explained, ‘you will be expected to work just as
hard as we do; to rise early and use the day productively just as we do; to attend mass and to ask the Lord’s forgiveness.’ I noticed she didn’t tag ‘just as we do’ on
the end of that last one.

Apart from the endless standing, which was tiring because my legs and ankles became increasingly sore and swollen, I soon learned I had got off reasonably lightly. Some girls had been assigned
much more punishing duties, such as working in the laundry, where vast quantities of dirty terry nappies were laundered each day. The nappies had to be transferred, steaming and soaking, from the
huge washing vats to be rinsed and then spun in the enormous dryer. For anyone this would be hard physical work, but for girls at such an advanced stage of pregnancy it was exhausting.

‘Your day begins directly after breakfast,’ Sister Teresa explained now, as she showed me the various items of paraphernalia that would become my only companions for much of the day.
‘You’ll come in here, and first wash the previous night’s bottles and teats, then put them in the steriliser, here. After that, you’ll make up the three feeds for the
daytime and, that done, you’ll wash down the worktops and floor.’

‘How many babies are here?’ I ventured to ask her, as there seemed to be so many bottles.

‘Around ten,’ she said crisply. ‘More or less. It varies. And cleanliness is key,’ she reminded me. ‘You have sole responsibility for the milk kitchen, Angela, and
cleanliness is paramount at all times. That is why proper sterilisation is vital. This is a job that requires great attention to hygiene. Do you understand that?’

She sounded like she assumed I’d know nothing about hygiene, having not known how to resist the evils of the flesh. I assured her I did and that I would take the greatest of care.

‘You then have further duties after supper,’ she added, ‘when you’ll return here to make up a second batch of bottles: those for the night-time and early morning
feeds.’

As I stood there, trying hard to take everything in so as not to attract even more of her disapproval, I imagined filling one of those neatly ranked bottles and feeding my own baby from it. I
felt completely out of my depth. This was a world I hadn’t any experience of and it frightened me. Everything about it felt alien. Yet, at the same time, the idea made me feel unexpectedly
maternal. I was trying so hard to put it all out of my mind, but I had a baby growing inside me, kicking me and squirming, and making its presence felt – my own
child
. I didn’t
want to think about the baby, because it was going to be taken away from me. But seeing the little bottles triggered something inside me, and I couldn’t seem to shake off the thought of that
future parting.

That first evening at Loreto Convent is a blur now. I recall a supper, at around 5.30, of watery scrambled eggs, and meeting lots of other girls, all pink cheeked and lumbering
and anxious of expression, all in the same desperate plight. Though I met new mothers, too, and could hear regular mewling cries, I remember being shocked that I hadn’t seen any babies. Where
were they? Why weren’t they there?

‘Because they spend every moment of their lives in the nursery,’ Mary told me once we were back up in our room again, getting ready for bed. ‘On their own.’

‘That’s awful,’ I said, genuinely surprised. ‘Aren’t the mothers allowed to bring them out?’

‘Heavens, no!’

I was shocked again. I’d had a picture, insofar as I’d had a picture of anything, of the new mothers sitting together, feeding their infants and chatting, helping one another,
comparing notes. ‘So do they go to them, then? In the nursery?’I asked her.

Mary’s expression made it clear that even after a week she was already much more clued up than I was. ‘They are allowed in
only
to feed them and change them,’ she said.
‘Though no breastfeeding; breastfeeding isn’t allowed here. And it’s forbidden to go into the nursery at any other time. Oh, and they’re not to be taken out of the nursery,
either. One of the girls did that last week. Well, I think that’s what she intended. She got no further than the doorway, and she got such a vicious dressing down, you wouldn’t believe.
No, they’re never allowed out – not till they leave here.’

‘What,
never
?’ I gasped, as the picture in my head dissolved away. However little I’d allowed myself to wonder how things might be before my baby was adopted, spending
time with it, nursing it, cuddling it, being with it were all things I’d taken as given – but I was wrong.

Mary was shaking her head.

Once again it struck me: I hadn’t seen a single baby. ‘But why would that be?’

‘Oh, they’ll have you think it’s so we don’t get too attached to them – or them to us, for that matter. But I’m thinking having to listen to them crying
themselves to sleep all the time is another a part of the punishment.’

‘That’s awful,’ I said again. ‘And so cruel. It’s not the babies’ fault, is it? Why are
they
being punished? They didn’t ask to be born into
these circumstances, did they?’

But as soon as I thought that, the guilt just weighed heavier. Whose fault was it that my baby was going to be born in this grim place? All mine.

Mary looked so frightened that night. So frightened and so lonely, kneeling beside her little bed, so far from home and loved ones, saying prayers to a God she must have felt
had abandoned her.

The lights went out moments after – 9 p.m. was the curfew – and I felt shattered, as world-weary as it was possible to be. But there was also the cruel irony of feeling so young at
the same time, of lying in the blackness, the old building groaning and creaking around me, and feeling like a naughty girl back in my convent school being snapped at for some minor misdemeanour or
other, feeling powerless and insignificant and vulnerable and ill thought of by cold, distant nuns.

My last thoughts were of my unborn baby’s father, of my exciting life in London, of the burgeoning career I’d had to flee from and of the night I’d spent with Peter, having
foolishly fallen for charms so fleeting that they’d soon melted away. Nothing could have been in starker contrast to the position in which I now found myself. What had I been
thinking
?
I felt a deepening despair and a sense that I had ruined everything.

I pulled my knees up towards my tummy and tried not to cry. My nose inches from the cold wall, I clasped my arms around my body and felt the warm bulk of my baby, gently stirring inside me,
blissfully ignorant of what was to come. An unbearable loneliness descended and engulfed me. I’d never felt so wretched.

I’d made the most terrible mistake of my life. And now I was going to have to pay for it.

‘M
ary! Angela!’

Sister Teresa’s voice was so shrill it would slice through the heaviest of slumbers, but when she rapped on the bedroom door at seven o’clock sharp the next morning, I’d
already been awake for some time. I’d listened to the small sounds of sleep Mary was making in the other bed, but for me the fitful slumber that had finally claimed me had been interrupted at
intervals all night. By the movement of my baby? By some sudden noise? By the sound of crying? I didn’t know. But lying in the blackness in that unfamiliar bed, the dark hours before dawn had
seemed endless.

Unsurprisingly, since we always shy away from awful truths, it had taken a while for me to accept that I really was pregnant. I’d started my periods at the age of eleven,
and was given just one sex education lecture by my mother. It consisted of six words: ‘never let a man touch you’. This had naturally conjured up all sorts of astonishing visions, none
of which was remotely relevant to the situation I was in now.

I had done that classic thing: I’d been entirely swept up in the moment. Those words, uttered all those years back – and never repeated, much less qualified – were as nothing.
They might just as well have never been said.

By the time I made the appointment with the company doctor (my then employers, like many of their kind in the City, retained one to look after the health and welfare of their staff ), I’d
missed three periods. And though I knew, deep down, that I was clutching at straws, still I clung to anything that might counter reality. Perhaps I was suffering from some obscure illness? Maybe I
was about to make medical history.

It was a vain hope. I knew it was, too, for I’d already taken action. Only a few days before, I’d confided in a friend and she’d given me the name and number of an
abortionist.

Clasping the slip of paper she’d given me as if it were a clutch of priceless diamonds, I’d slipped my coat on, left my offices and made my way through the hurrying midday throng to
Eastcheap, where I knew there was a public phone box in the Post Office. I dialled the number with urgent fingers, feeling tongue-tied and anxious. Where did you start when you were making such a
confession?

‘Yes?’ came the greeting, six or seven rings in. It was a woman’s voice – sharp. I hardly knew where to begin.

‘I’ve been given your number,’ I said. ‘I’m pregnant, you see, and I—’

The woman didn’t let me get any further. ‘What was the date of your last period?’ she wanted to know.

I told her.

There wasn’t even a second’s hesitation. ‘Then I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,’ she said.

This left me momentarily speechless. What? Just like that? It sounded so final, so brutal.

‘But my friend said you might be able to do something even so.’ I could feel my throat tightening as tears of frustration began to well in my eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said again. ‘But really, I can’t.’

‘But couldn’t you just see me at least? Examine me? I’m sure—’

‘
No
.’ Her voice was emphatic. ‘You are much too far gone for any sort of intervention. Your friend shouldn’t have told you any such thing. If you’d come to
me earlier, then perhaps . . .’

Oh, God. Why
hadn’t
I? ‘I’m not completely certain about the dates,’ I tried desperately. ‘It might be that—’

‘Look, I really can’t do anything for you,’ she said again. ‘It would be much too dangerous, too likely to involve complications. And if something went wrong, and you had
to go to hospital—’

‘I wouldn’t care! Anything would be better than—’

‘No,
you
might not care, but I would. You must see that. Abortion is illegal, as you well know. So the next thing would be that the police would become involved. So where would that
leave me? Where would it leave all the others who might need my help?’

‘Please!’ I was crying now. ‘You must be able to do
something
!’

‘I can’t. I’m so sorry. I just can’t.’

‘But if you can’t help me, what am I going to
do
? Please, I’m desperate!’

But then I realised I was talking into a void. She had obviously disconnected the call. And she’d been right to do so.

The company doctor sat me down and told me I was already four months pregnant. I was almost halfway down a road I had no choice but to go down now, and at its end lay a terrifying unknown.

Travelling home from work that evening, walking past all the rows and rows of identical bungalows, with only the occasional ‘room in the roof ’ breaking the
monotony of the dreary landscape, I knew with that crushing news my fate was sealed. Whatever happened now, I was going to have this baby. And then? I simply had no idea.

When I got home, both my mother and stepfather, Sam, were there to greet me, sitting like judge and jury, frowning. It was immediately obvious that they would not like the verdict: I could see
it in their eyes.

My mother, like most mothers back then, kept an eye on my periods. I’d been making excuses for the lack of them ever since I’d missed the first one, ironically only a day after
finishing with Peter. It had been a very short infatuation, which ended once I realised, again during an evening at the Ilford Palais, that I wasn’t the only one to fall for his skill at
charming women.