‘Shall we have a cup of tea?’ Mum would ask after what felt like hours of digging, and she’d pour us all a cuppa from the flask she always had with her.
If American kids learn to love milkshakes early and French ones like a bit of watered-down wine, British children have the need for tea soaked into their bones from almost the moment they’re out the cradle. Tea was the answer to every one of life’s setbacks, according to my mum and dad, and a cup of tea like one of those I’d had as a child on the allotment, when I’d dreamed of fixing up the shed just as they did in Calamity Jane, was poured once again when I left school at 16 and we all wondered what I’d make of myself. I’d never got on at school because I was a day dreamer, and my teachers had said again and again that I wouldn’t go very far. But just before I left, I did work experience at a flower shop and a whole new world opened up for me: I enjoyed the work, was good at something for a change and was paid £15 for the day. I couldn’t wait to leave school.
So that’s just what I did, after a chat over a cuppa with Mum and Dad; and a few years later they poured another when the local vicar asked to marry me. I’d met him when I was working at the flower shop, where I was on the phone almost every day to the local undertaker, Alan, who was on the phone just as much to the vicar, Harry. Funerals, just like weddings, are important business to any florist, but when I made up wreaths I liked to think I was also helping grieving families say a proper goodbye. Then at the end of a busy day, I’d meet up with Alan and Harry, who weren’t much older than me, and we’d go out.
‘Aren’t you the florist, undertaker and vicar?’ people would ask, looking really surprised that three people so used to the sad business of giving the dead a good send-off could enjoy themselves. We were even spotted in the local disco a few times, and we all laughed when people’s mouths dropped open in surprise. I liked Harry more and more as I got to know him. He was kind and considerate, and never judged anyone who came through the doors of the church youth club he ran and where I volunteered. He had all the time in the world for everybody – day and night – and I liked that.
Trouble was, though, I was totally unprepared when he asked my dad if he could marry me. I thought Harry was just coming round for tea, but he only went and told Dad that he wanted to pop the question, didn’t he? I was young, about 20 at the time, and couldn’t believe it. I’d always dreamed of having what my parents did, but I wasn’t ready just yet. I burst into tears of surprise when Harry spoke to Dad because I didn’t want to leave my lovely, comfortable home. Most of my friends still lived with their parents and I liked the way things were.
‘Let’s have a cuppa, Ju,’ my dad said after Harry had left.
The vicar had got the message that maybe I wasn’t ready to be his wife when I’d started crying, and I wasn’t the only one who’d been surprised by his proposal. Dad had laughed out loud when Harry spoke to him and I think he was almost as shocked as I was that anyone would think I could make a wife, because I was still so young and dizzy. But as I sipped the hot sweet tea, I wondered for a moment if I’d made a terrible mistake, because Harry was such a good man.
I didn’t stop to think about it too much, though, because I didn’t stop to think about too much of anything back then. I just trusted that things would work out as I wanted them to; that another honourable man would come along and ask to marry me. I never questioned the fact that one day I would settle down with my Prince Charming. I was such a dreamer back then that my idea of a bad day was getting into work – after moving to a florist in London’s poshest district, Mayfair – to find out they’d delivered flowers to Michael Jackson at a nearby hotel. He was my idol and I was heartbroken that I’d missed him. As I say, I didn’t realise how good I had it.
Then came the afternoon when Mum and Dad had to make another pot of tea as I told them I’d unexpectedly fallen pregnant. I was 22 and had been seeing a local boy called Howard for a bit. Having been told I had polycystic ovaries and would find it hard to conceive, I was – you guessed it – young and dizzy when it came to contraception and now had to tell my parents that I was pregnant.
‘Let’s have a cuppa,’ Dad said and we sat down together as I cried.
My parents looked stern. They’d brought us up with rules and I knew they’d be disappointed.
‘What are you going to do, Julia?’ Mum asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I wailed into my tea.
But I did really. I knew I was going to have my baby, even though Howard was understandably a bit shocked by the whole thing. It might not be quite how I’d planned it, but this baby was mine and I would be a good mother. Howard tried to do right by me and I even moved in with him to see if we could make a proper go of it. But six weeks later I rang and asked Dad to come and get me because neither Howard nor I was comfortable. I felt as if I was letting everyone down as I sat in the cab and burst into tears.
When we got home, I ran upstairs to my bedroom and opened the door to find the room had been decorated for me. There was white tongue-and-groove boarding around the bottom of the walls and a wallpaper frieze covered in roses around the top. Once I’d slept in that room with my sister, Tor, and now there was a cot in it. I started to cry even louder.
‘Come on, Ju,’ Dad said, hugging me. ‘Dry your tears now and come downstairs. Mum’s put the kettle on.’
I think most first-time mums have a dreamy image of how it’s going to be but mine wasn’t just rose tinted. It was cerise. As I got fatter and fatter, I dreamed of the little girl I was going to have with huge blue eyes and blonde curly hair like that I’d had as a child. I couldn’t stop looking at babies in prams wherever I went and wondered what pretty clothes I was going to dress mine in. I loved their smell, their smiles, the dimples in their cheeks, everything about them.
But when he was born George wasn’t at all what I was expecting. Stiff and red, he screamed from the first moment he met the world, and his cries echoed around the room as the nurses took him away to look at him because he’d swallowed meconium; his head had also been misshapen as his tiny body squeezed down the birth canal. I couldn’t help but feel a little worried. I thought babies came out smiling and smelling of talcum powder.
When they brought George back a few minutes later, the nurses suggested giving him a bottle of water and Mum took the baby because I was still so shaky I didn’t trust myself to hold him. But as he was lowered into Mum’s arms George just carried on screaming, and as I looked at them together I could see she was struggling to feed him. I wondered how I was ever going to do it if Mum couldn’t. She was an expert after four children but even she was having trouble.
‘He’ll learn,’ Mum said with a smile as she looked at George wrapped up in his blanket, his face red and blotchy from wailing. ‘These things take time, but it will come naturally. Don’t worry, Ju.’
I didn’t know it then, of course, but this was something I would hear again and again over the weeks, months and years that followed. Mum was only being kind, but hers was the first of a thousand explanations about George.
‘His hips are a bit stiff, so he might be a bit uncomfortable,’ one nurse said as he screamed and screamed in the days after he was born.
‘It was quite a difficult delivery, so he needs time to settle,’ another told me.
I’d be a rich woman today if I had a pound for every time I heard the words ‘It will take time.’ Back then I believed what I was told and was sure George would be calmer when I took