The second time I went into labour very late—it was three weeks after my due date according to the doctor. In the end, I suffered a thrombosis and they decided to induce the birth. Under the circumstances it was no surprise that it was touch and go throughout the whole labour. After several hours the baby was born, but he was blue from a deficiency of oxygen in his blood.
‘It’s a boy,’ the nurse smiled, ‘but we need to put him into the special care unit for now.’
I felt a huge rush of love swiftly followed by a wave of concern. My second baby was here, and the fact he was a boy would please Roger no end. But would he be all right?
The nurses didn’t even want to let me see him because they thought his colour would distress me, and he was taken away immediately while the team turned their attention to patching me up. I was exhausted.
‘You need some sleep, love,’ the sister said, but all I could think about was my baby.
‘Will he be OK?’ I asked anyone who would listen.
‘With God’s help,’ the sister told me.
That didn’t reassure me at all.
In the end both the baby and I stayed in hospital for a week or so. He was given excellent care but for years afterwards the tip of one of his ears remained blue and from that very first day he had difficulty breathing. The nurses showed me how to prepare a steam inhaler and gave me instructions for his care. It was a lot to take on. I was still only twenty-one myself and struggling to keep my head above water in a grim marriage, but I listened carefully and made sure I understood everything I had to do.
Roger arrived well after all the action was over. As expected, as soon as he heard the baby was a boy he was pleased as punch. ‘He’s got my eyes,’ he said proudly. ‘So, what name will we give my little man?’
We decided on David. ‘How about David John?’ I said, remembering what had happened with Jude’s registration.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘David John it is,’ but then he registered the baby with his own name as a middle name anyway.
The months that followed were particularly difficult. Despite his pride at having produced a male heir, I was bewildered by Roger’s apparent lack of care for his children. I would have laid down my life in a heartbeat for either of them. In contrast, Roger simply wasn’t interested. He thought looking after the children was woman’s work and wouldn’t even push a pram.
‘I’m no sissy,’ he said.
David was a needy baby—his bronchial difficulties took a lot of my time and I was very worried that Jude wasn’t getting enough attention. I felt hurt on her behalf when I was busy giving David medical care and her father wasn’t on hand. It wouldn’t have taken much for him to sit and tell her a story or give her a cuddle on his knee. In fact, I think Roger resented the fact that my attention was focused elsewhere and I wasn’t merely his slave any more. If anything, his temper tantrums and violent outbursts were increasing around that time.
In November 1966, a few weeks after David was born, things reached crisis point. Roger lost his temper, and this time it was with the children. They were typical babies—noisy and needy—and he became angry and frustrated and began to physically discipline them. One day Jude crawled towards the fire and I pulled her back.
‘No silly. Hot. It’s hot,’ I gently chastised her.
‘You have to show her!’ Roger snapped and, grabbing her, he pressed her little hand onto the grille in front of the flames. She screamed at the top of her voice with pain and acute terror. Nothing like that had ever happened in her young life and she had no way of understanding it. As I rushed to run her wound under cold water and try to calm her down, Roger looked on mockingly and I felt hatred towards him for the first time. How could anyone do that to a child?
I had a sudden flashback to the day my father tied me to a kitchen chair and forced me to eat spoonfuls of soot from the fireplace. I was choking, my eyes streaming, my chest heaving for breath, utterly and completely petrified. It was that incident, when I was four years old, that led to me being hospitalized and then taken into an institution for the next three years. I couldn’t help but see the parallels between Roger’s and my father’s behaviour and I was completely devastated.
Jude cried for over an hour, and that night something in me hardened. He could hit me all he liked but I couldn’t stand by and watch him injure my children. I couldn’t risk them being taken away from me if social services thought I wasn’t protecting them properly. I couldn’t risk them being hurt any more. The very next day I took my life in my hands and contacted the police. If Roger had found out where I had gone, the beating would have been merciless, but I had to do something. I didn’t want my children to suffer the kind of bullying that I had endured from my father and that was that.
I wheeled the pram to Openshawe police station on Ashton Old Road and furtively darted inside. There were no female officers but I was put in a room and told to talk to the sergeant on duty, a huge man who hardly seemed to be listening to me, even when I showed him Jude’s blistered fingers.
‘Look, love,’ he said, once I had blurted my story out, ’this is a domestic situation.’
‘But please,’ I begged, ‘I’m afraid of what he might do.’
The officer wasn’t sympathetic. ‘He pays the rent does he, your husband?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well he’s master of the house then.’
‘He said if I left, he’d kill me.’
The policeman shrugged his shoulders. ‘He wants you to stay,’ he said, as if it was only a natural reaction.
And that was it. I left the station devastated.
The following day I tried again to get help. I wheeled the pram to Ashton social services department and repeated my story.
‘You could go to a shelter,’ the lady said, ‘but there’s a good chance your children might be taken into care.’
I looked at Jude and David in the pram and realized that wasn’t even an option. I wouldn’t be able to bear it. I could never desert them.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
And I left.
I didn’t know where to turn next. After another sleepless night I realized that I had to find someone to talk to. That alone would be a big help and in desperation I took a big step. I phoned my mother.
I hadn’t seen my mother since I got back from South Africa five years earlier. I’d stayed with her and my sisters for two long weeks, trying desperately to fit into a family I hadn’t been part of since I was three years old. But the stay descended into bitterness and suspicion on her part, as she and my sisters accused me of ‘stealing their things’ and tried to hide me away from the neighbours like a guilty little secret. I’d left to start work at Speedy’s and hadn’t seen her since so she’d never even met her grandchildren. I sent her a note after each birth, but she hadn’t shown any more interest in Jude or David than she had in me when I was growing up. Nonetheless I hoped that maybe she might be able to help me now. After all, we were both mothers. Jude and David were her grandchildren. Surely she would want to be involved?
‘Hello, it’s Judy,’ I started, awkwardly.
‘Oh yes,’ Mum said coldly. It was not the response I’d hoped