Beyond the former convent walls, life went on as usual. The American film star James Dean had just been killed in a car crash. Princess Margaret had announced that she wouldn’t be marrying Group Captain Peter Townsend. People who could afford televisions were able to watch a new commercial channel called ITV with its advertisements for soap powder between festive programmes. For us, Christmas came and went, and none of our babies showed any signs of arriving. On New Year’s Eve, I took part in a little show we put on for each other as we counted in 1956. Even though I was so heavily pregnant, I did a full Fred Astaire tap-dance routine that had been one of my dad’s favourites in the hope that it might bring something on. As midnight struck and the most momentous year of my life drew to a close, we were each handed a mug of celebratory cocoa.
I couldn’t help but wonder what the New Year would bring. It was less than three years since I’d lost my father and in that time my brother had almost died and my mother had suffered terribly with her hand. It was two months before my seventeenth birthday; I was still so young, physically and emotionally. I had no idea what to expect in the coming days and months and instead of dwelling on how painful the birth might be or how I might cope afterwards, I could only focus on beating the other girls in my dorm to win my prize.
It was the early hours of 2 January and I was lying in bed when my waters suddenly broke, drenching my nightdress and the sheets. My immediate reaction was one of elation. ‘This is it! I’m going to get the pram!’
Then the pain began.
Hearing my cries, one of the girls ran to get Sister Joan Augustine, who called an ambulance. She came with me to Chester City Hospital, the place to which my family’s fates seemed inextricably entwined. The contractions were getting stronger and stronger and I’d never known pain like it. With only the nun who least liked me for company, I lay on a bed in the labour ward feeling so frightened I thought I might die.
I longed for my mother through wave after wave of contractions, but I tried to be brave. The sisters had explained what would happen during the birth but none of what they’d told us prepared me for the reality. Someone clamped a rubber mask over my face for gas and air but it reminded me of the Mickey Mouse gas mask I’d had during the war and I began to panic. The gas it pumped only made me feel more nauseous. As I retched and writhed, I tried not to engage in eye contact with the doctor and at least six nurses around me. My ankles were tied with bandages to metal poles at the end of the bed. I’d always been such a shy and private person. I had only ever shown myself to one man. Now everyone was seeing everything – and there was so much blood.
‘It’s a big baby but you’re doing really well,’ the doctor told me encouragingly. ‘Push when I tell you.’
There was no anaesthetic, no epidural. The pain was excruciating and became worse and worse as the hours progressed. Where was my mum? Where was Jim? He should have been there, waiting in the corridor outside for our son or daughter to be born. I wept with pain and bitterness.
At seven in the morning, my eight-pound baby boy finally pushed his way out into this world. He was a little jaundiced and covered in blood but they laid him on my chest straight away. Completely overwhelmed, more exhausted than I had ever felt in my life, I cradled his warm body in my arms.
‘Congratulations, Pauline,’ one of the nurses said. ‘What are you going to call him?’
‘Timothy Paul…’ I gasped, barely able to speak.
Unfurling Timothy’s perfect little fingers until they curled around one of mine, I looked down at my baby boy and splashed his face with tears of joy and sorrow.
THE FIRST TIME MY MOTHER SET EYES ON TIMOTHY PAUL, HER REACTION was exactly what I’d hoped it would be. ‘Oh, he’s beautiful!’ she cried when she came to visit. ‘Here, I bought these for him.’ From out of her handbag came a lovely little set of clothes. ‘I’ve been saving in a club. I got them from that shop at the end of the road.’
I could have cried with relief. She’d said her grandson was beautiful and she’d saved for some baby clothes. I knew it: she was going to let me bring him home after all. I didn’t dare ask her there and then but the indications were good. Now that I’d had Timothy Paul, now that I’d held him and nursed my beautiful boy, I couldn’t possibly give him up.
Mum came to see me when she could after work in the week I remained in hospital with Timothy Paul but she was often delayed. Every night at visiting time, I used to slide down the bed and pretend to be asleep until she got there. I was the youngest in a ward of twenty women and the only one who wasn’t married. Through half-closed eyes, I’d spy husbands fussing over their wives and couldn’t help but feel sad. I wished with all my sixteen-year-old heart that Jim would stroll into the ward just like the other men, laden with flowers and beaming with pride. I wrote to him again to tell him that he had a son. My mother contacted his base with the same news, but still there was no word. When she registered my son’s birth for me at the council offices, her voice must have wavered as she told the registrar to put down his father as ‘US airman’ but Timothy Paul’s surname as ‘Tilston’.
After a week, I was returned to St Bridget’s. It was good to be back in what felt like my safe haven and to show off my gorgeous baby to the other girls. Thrilled at having beaten the two who’d had their babies after mine, I couldn’t wait to be presented with the beautiful new Silver Cross pram Sister Joan Augustine had promised. That gleaming buggy had been the one goal my childish mind had focused on. It was all my missed Christmas and birthday presents rolled into one. Whatever the future held for me and my baby—and I knew it would be a struggle—I wanted him to have that pram at least.
Sister Joan Augustine told me then that she’d given the pram to someone else: a tall girl called Mary who’d given birth a day after me but who’d come back to St Bridget’s earlier. ‘Hers was the first baby back from hospital,’ she said. Instead she presented me with a shabby little second-hand pram with wobbly wheels and dodgy brakes. I wept buckets over her decision. I immediately hated the horrid pram I was given; I loathed it even more when I came out to where I’d parked Timothy Paul in it one afternoon only to find the wind had blown it down a slope in the garden. One more inch and my precious baby boy might have been tipped over a verge.
My happiest times in those first few months were those spent with my son. As was the routine, all new mothers would wash our babies together and then sit in a row to feed them. Timothy Paul, dressed in the clothes my mother bought for him, clearly loved that moment best because he’d be so contented at my breast that he’d fall asleep and take longer to finish than the rest.
‘Tilly, you’re always the last,’ Sister Joan Augustine would complain. I certainly made a fuss of my baby, and my fussing seemed to upset her routine, but I didn’t care. I was growing increasingly attached to Timothy Paul and was determined to squeeze in every extra minute with him that I could. My stubborn streak cut in and I’d insist that he be allowed to finish at his own pace.
Every week I’d be summoned to Mother Superior’s office to discuss the future of my baby. ‘Now, Pauline, have you decided for adoption or will you be taking your baby home?’ she’d ask, peering at me over her spectacles.
Mrs Cotter, my social worker, would often be there, along with Sister Joan Augustine. ‘Your mother says neither of you can look after the baby,’ my social worker would remind me. ‘There are plenty of childless couples who’d give him a better life.’
Sister Joan Augustine would add, ‘You must make the decision now