Violets, page 10
Come on, I’ll hand her over to Ma and we can go.
And how they will watch you grow, these women.
Hawkish, pinching your cheeks between forefinger and thumb,
knowing all along, Pram Boy,
whose children belong to whom
Whose are the mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts,
relationships all fluid and undone.
See your mother among them,
she can play any tune you’d care to name
Good seamstress, excellent cook,
will patch you up
at elbows and knees,
sew tiny coal sacks for your Dinky trucks,
which you will empty in her shoes
squirming out of her grip.
Little shit.
Never aware, Pram Boy
of how everything
must be repaired,
reused;
might be lost
Until you will say it yourself one day:
You are not my mother,
you are not.
34
The Adoption Society’s imperative, the nun said, was to make permanent and secure arrangements for the child’s moral and physical health.
The office was down some steps at the end of the hall. The house would once have been grand but now the paint on the walls was chipped and the tiles on the floor were cracked. Violet could hear the sound of plates being stacked in the scullery next door.
She sat calmly, her suitcase at her feet and her coat on her lap. The baby had been taken by a young nun at the door. The Mother Superior was poised with a pen in her hand.
The Order of the Sisters of St Paul ran the mother and baby home. Adoptions were arranged by Father Hudson’s Homes.
Violet had written to an administrator called Father William McBride. The reply had come straight away.
Boys were hard to place, he said. Could she not make arrangements with her diocese in Wales? Would her mother not take the baby in her place?
Violet wrote again and he promised to make enquiries on her behalf. It was another week before she heard. The NCO at the depot said something about bleeding hearts, taking in waifs and strays. Then she signed the papers and Violet was discharged. She was given ration coupons, a train warrant and a change of civilian clothes.
The nun picked up two forms from a pile in a tray. Babies went to good Catholic families, she said. Mothers were offered temporary lodgings nearby and permitted to visit once a day.
Until such time …
Violet shifted under her gaze.
You say the boy was baptised?
The nun licked her finger and thumb, flicked through the papers Violet had brought. Her desk was flanked by a statue of the Virgin Mary and a painting of the conversion of Saul.
Through the window behind her, Violet could see a garden with raised beds and the purplish leaves of winter veg poking raggedly out of the soil.
She thought of the day in Naples when she had carried him down. Out of the ward, across chequered floors, through the hospital yard shielding him from the sun. To the chapel with its wooden pews and cool white walls.
He was three weeks old. In the morning she had given him a bath then dressed him in a white gown handed down by one of the girls. It had an embroidered collar and tiny pearl buttons at the back.
The nun put her glasses on and held the papers up to the light.
Baptised by US Army Chaplain, Father Victor L. Dux?
Yes. Violet had been to see the priest before the baby was born. He invited her to sit down, nodded as she spoke. Then he’d asked if she wanted to go to confession and Violet had said no.
Right. Shall we get on?
The nun picked up a form and pressed down hard with her pen.
Mother?
Violet stated her name and date of birth.
Father?
There was a pause, then Violet spoke.
Len Shale.
Pontypridd, Wales.
Age 24.
The nun finished the forms and stamped each one.
Violet waited while the nun bustled about, went to the filing cabinet, sat back down. And she thought about the Polish soldier on the train to Aberdeen, his delicate hands clean-scrubbed, his hair parted on the side, going back to his sweetheart or his bride, for all she knew.
For all she knew.
But it was too late. It was done.
The nun tore off the top copy of the form, clipped it together with the papers on the desk.
And it wasn’t about blame, or naming names. Or even erasing the soldier from her past. It was just about moving on.
A fresh start. And now the boy was British born.
After they’d finished with the forms, the Mother Superior led her back along the hall. Sounds of wails and voices came from somewhere behind a door. Another nun came out.
Don’t worry, he’s settled down.
Sister Cathy was her name. She was tall and thin with a gentle voice, the crushed t’s of an Irish accent mixed with something else. Wisps of pale hair had come free from the tight white band around her face. Her wimple wasn’t quite straight and her cheeks were pink. She had pushed the sleeves of her habit up and rolled the white cuffs of her blouse back over the top.
She opened the nursery door.
There was noise as well as light. There were bangs and cries and jangling toys. Someone was singing a song.
The boy was lying on a rug and a nun sat grasping his hands, clapping them together in limp little fists.
The nursery was where they played in the day, Sister Cathy said. Next door was where they slept. They went through to the adjoining room where the blinds were drawn. There were four cots. Two babies were asleep in one.
In the corner sat an old pram.
PART SIX
35
All that spring, Violet and Fred worked on the house. They worked on their hands and knees, up ladders to clean or paint or hammer in nails. They hung pictures, waxed drawers, sanded down then varnished doors.
Daffodils and hyacinths came out again, sickly scented in the yard every time they brushed past. Children loitered in the street out front, kicked balls and played with splintered wood, metal sharpened to a point, makeshift carts and prams, dirty hands.
When Fred wrote the letter, he asked for a boy. It was a week later when they received a reply.
I am delighted to know that you wish to adopt a little baby boy, and I feel sure we shall be able to find one suitable for you.
The letter was signed Father William McBride. They were to send their marriage certificate and fill in the enclosed medical form. A health visitor would call round to inspect their home.
How would they manage? Violet thought.
She had measured up for curtains in the back room. Her mother had some fabric spare. It was pale yellow with green sprigs. Violet went up to check one more time. She opened the door, stepped into the light.
Hello? she said.
It echoed.
Violet remembered when they had painted the room white. So pleased with themselves, their little wedding and the house. Just a few days, going to bed in the afternoons, knowing that Fred would go away again soon.
And oh, they had been full of plans.
She went to the window. Fred was digging over the raised beds out back. He had taken his shirt off and hung it on the fence, stripped down to his vest. Violet watched as he laid down a plank, bent down, made a furrow in the soil with his hand.
He saw her at the window and waved. Then he held out his palm for her to see the tiny seeds.
She shook her head, frowned.
Summer carrots! he mouthed.
There.
Clutch her hand, Pram Boy
as she stands in the room at the top of the house
painted white and clean and ready.
Ready for who?
Ready for you.
Or see her face
covered in cold cream at night,
her bedjacket tight
under her chin,
haunted
by the idea that you exist, somewhere.
A boy like you,
blond-curled
good as new.
Perhaps a little thin,
wearing
borrowed clothes
with holes in.
Knock knock, who’s that?
Oh for you have your bags packed, Pram Boy,
waiting by the door.
Stork-dropped, listening
eager for more.
36
The priest had put out for a housekeeper soon after Violet arrived. The presbytery was on the other side of the church. Sister Cathy had suggested she apply and she’d been working there six days a week, paying upkeep for the boy. She visited each day, went round the back way and let herself in, helped with lunch sometimes, got him up from his nap, gave him his bottle, sang to him on her lap.
And he grew like an apple on a tree, sat and played with a spinning top, clapped his hands. He was eight months old, already crawling round, wide-eyed and bold.
She did the ironing in the afternoons when the kitchen got the sun. There were three sets of linen for Mass. She sprinkled each cloth with water, pressed down hard then flipped them over in half. She put the linens in the basket and quickly finished the rest. A shirt, three hankies, a tea towel, two vests.
She heard the front door slam shut.
All right, Violet?
The priest was a short, fat, unkempt man. Father John. He was from Liverpool and Violet liked the way he spoke. Lazily almost, with a sardonic drawl. She cooked him breakfast every day, then they would go across to the church in time for early Mass.
The priest wandered through to the kitchen, his collar unclipped, scratching his chest. His hair stuck out in tufts from his head. He spoke through the cigarette in his mouth.
You off soon, Violet?
Yep.
She indicated his supper plated up and covered on the stove.
Righto.
He’d never said anything, Father John. Never asked about her past. He knew about the boy, would ask her how he was. And she would mention little things: the time he nearly choked on a wooden bead, the other day when he was stung by a wasp.
Violet went through to the hall and put on her coat, checked herself in the mirror, picked up her keys and called goodbye.
Father John popped his head round the kitchen door.
God bless, Vi.
37
The man from the Public Health Department sat on the settee, a cup and saucer in one hand and his briefcase on his knee.
A formality, he said.
Violet smiled.
He put the cup and saucer on the table she had placed at his side.
He had some questions he must ask, if they didn’t mind?
Fred stood by the window. She wished he would sit down. Violet glanced around the room one final time.
She’d worked solidly for two weeks. Blacked the hearth and grate, and the stovetop, and beaten all the rugs. Even scrubbed the flags out in the yard. She had finished the curtains for the back bedroom and put a chair in there, and a chest, which was empty except for a blanket and some sheets.
Because what could they get for a child who would arrive, just like that?
And for Violet, no waiting, no nine months.
No doctors, no midwives. No carrying high or low. No one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy. No old wives’ tales, no health advice. No cravings, no Guinness for iron. Nobody giving up seats on the bus. No bed rest, no labour, no birth.
38
Violet took the path round the back of the church, up through the garden past the vegetable patch. She’d helped get some of the early crops in. Now it was a riot of bright green. The nuns who worked in the kitchen saw her coming and let her in.
She was in time to get the boy up from his nap. Sister Cathy was sitting reading a book.
He’s all yours, she said.
It was her little joke. Only once, she had hinted at something else.
Violet, you could keep him, you know?
She had been watching as Violet gave him a bath, soaped his arms, squelched her hand in between his legs, cleaned between his fingers and toes. Sister Cathy had taken the jug and doused his hair. The boy’s eyes closed and he gasped, laughed; so did they.
Violet had lifted him onto the towel on her lap and wrapped him tightly as he sucked his thumb. And Sister Cathy had asked her why she couldn’t take him home.
She had listened calmly to Violet’s reply. The town, her mother, the rest of her life stretching ahead. And then Sister Cathy had told her that she was wrong. That Violet was strong, that God would forgive.
Violet shrugged. That’s the thing. I don’t think of him as a sin.
Sister Cathy bent to pick the towel up from the floor. Violet tried to soften her tone as she gathered up the boy’s clothes. He deserved more, she said. Didn’t ask to be born.
Isn’t that what everybody thinks?
Sister Cathy’s face was set in a passive smile.
Yes, I suppose it is.
Violet went back to combing his hair. They hadn’t spoken about it since.
~
She opened the nursery door a crack. All the other children were asleep in the row of cots but the boy would only sleep in the broken pram, jammed into the corner behind the door. It was grand and deep and its springs creaked. The flat base of its bed was long gone. He was curled up on a pile of blankets, sucking his thumb.
Only one other child was awake but she hadn’t made a sound. She had brown skin with soft, curly hair and dark eyes. Her nose ran constantly. Violet rarely heard her cry. When Violet asked, the nuns would shake their heads. Nobody would take her, they said.
Violet picked up the boy. His hair was damp with sleep, his neck smelled biscuity and clean. He sighed and leaned his head on her shoulder, put his thumb back in.
He was doted on, she knew. Everybody said. His eyes were pale blue and there were blond little curls forming at the back of his head.
That boy, Sister Cathy would say. Nothing will stand in his way.
Violet knelt down with him on the rug next door. He was learning to stand with hands held, then would wobble and fall. He clutched at her blouse, butted her with his head. Still, sometimes, he would try to shuffle down to her breast.
Violet, will you give us a hand?
Sister Cathy was getting the others up. Violet put the boy down. He howled, his face turned bright red. She made a smacking noise with her mouth.
Now now, I’m coming back.
One of the cots was wet. Violet got fresh sheets while Sister Cathy tended to the babies crying for milk. She moved quickly, stripped the cot, flipped the mattress, smoothed it flat.
The boy was crying furiously in the other room. Violet finished the cot and went to pick him up. She kissed him, looked into his watery eyes.
Hush now, Mama’s here.
He gave a final cry, was calm. Then he grinned and bounced a little in her arms.
39
Fred opened the letter and read it out loud.
Would they kindly call at ‘Woodville’, 176 Raddlebarn Road, at three o’clock Monday next, 10th June 1946?
This is our Mother and Baby Home and we shall have a baby boy for you.
He grinned.
You see?
The report from the Department of Health was highly satisfactory, it said. The Society were happy to go ahead as soon as arrangements could be made.
Violet shook her head. Would they bring him home straight away, just like that?
The letter didn’t say.
She counted in her head. It was Thursday. They only had the weekend to prepare.
Violet, we’re ready. Try to relax.
What about clothes, a cot? Violet asked.
For they were like people in a fable or rhyme, waiting for him to arrive, all wrapped up on their doorstep, like a prize.
40
My child, the nun called her, my child.
Violet sat with her hands folded in her lap. It was a bright, warm day. They must have taken the children out to play because there were some toys left scattered on the grass.
She looked at the clock. Ten past three. She would miss getting the boy up from his nap.
It was the third time she had been called in that month. The Mother Superior would ask pointedly how she was. Violet told her again that she needed a little more time, but that the boy was getting along fine.
Thriving, even.
The nun smoothed her habit down, straightened the wooden rosary beads around her neck.
Yes. The boy was growing up fast.
She paused, took a deep breath.
My child, she said. The older he is, the more attached he will become.
Violet stared out of the window behind her head. The nun cleared her throat, drew Violet’s gaze back to meet her own.
She’d had a telephone call from Father McBride. There was a young couple. They were looking for a little boy.
Violet, she said. Might it be time?
41
They arrived ten minutes early, crunching up the gravel drive.
They walked up the stone steps and Fred rang the bell.
Father McBride would see them soon, the nun said. It was difficult to distinguish the shape of her features from the wimple fastened tight around her head.
They were shown into a reception room. Violet smoothed the pleat of her skirt before sitting down. Fred stood at the window looking out.
There were voices in the hallway, indistinct. Violet took a handkerchief from her bag, pressed it delicately to her chin.
There was a knock at the door and a younger nun came in. She couldn’t have been more than Violet’s age.
