‘I don’t know who she looks like but it’s not me. She’s not mine,’ he said, walking out of the room. As he did so the nurses and the porter tried again to grab him but he shook them off. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m going and I won’t be back.’
He didn’t come back the next day, or over the next ten days, and the nurses, seeing Mary had no one else to care for her, let her stay as long as possible until eventually they needed the bed for someone else.
‘But where can I go? I haven’t got any money,’ Mary said as they explained that she’d have to leave the hospital. She knew she would have to go back to Tisdale Road, and on her own. As she packed her things around Sadie in a little Moses basket that the nurses had supplied, she knew she had to track David down. But first she needed clothes: she had only what she was standing in, and nothing for her baby. The hospital arranged for her to go to a charity shop for young mothers to get kitted out with second-hand babygrows. She picked out a few nice ones and, with Sadie safely installed in the basket, she boarded a number 19 bus outside the hospital.
It was 3.30 in the afternoon and the bus was crowded with schoolgirls eating crisps and swapping tales. Mary found a seat on the top deck and, with the basket on her lap, watched the chattering lasses all around her. It was strange to think that they were her age, and that just a year earlier the same preoccupations that they had, like who was kissing whom and what to wear for the school disco, had also been hers. Now she was worrying about other things, more serious things, like whether she had been abandoned by her lover and if she was alone in the world.
She entered their house and approached the bedsit fearfully, only to find that the door was locked and her key didn’t work. She sat on the stairs and waited, occasionally checking on her sleeping baby. Eventually a neighbour came in and started to climb the stairs.
‘Don’t suppose you’ve seen my Dave, have you?’ said Mary hopefully.
The neighbour stopped to get her breath and looked at her sorrowfully.
‘He moved out, love,’ said the woman. ‘But he left a forwarding address for post and that. I’ll fetch it for you, flower.’
Mary picked Sadie up and held her tightly. Her worst fears seemed to be confirmed. Didn’t Dave love her any more? She had to find him, and quickly. If she could just show him how pretty his daughter was… She made her way to the address written in scruffy handwriting on the scrap of paper: 110 Gloucester Avenue, just a few streets away. It was a room above a garage and on the other side of the road were some big, posh houses. The place was run-down, needing more than a lick of paint. She took a deep breath, picked up the Moses basket and went inside. It was ten days since Sadie had been born and she was unsure what kind of welcome she would get, but still Mary was determined to keep their little family together and make everything right with Dave.
Like the street door, the door to David’s flat was not locked, so she pushed it open. He was fast asleep in a single bed in the corner of the room. The single bed hurt her like a knife through the heart. She shut the door behind her and, taking Sadie in her arms, approached his sleeping form.
‘David, it’s us, your family. We’re back,’ she said, her heart thudding as he stirred. Instead of looking at her he simply rolled on to his other side.
‘All right,’ he said before drifting back to sleep. She breathed a sigh of relief and knew it was all going to be OK. He was just scared too, she told herself. It was all so confusing, but she hoped that before long he’d grow to love his daughter like she did.
And she was proved right, for soon things returned to the way they had been in St Ives. Now that Sadie had a more normal colour and David could see his daughter was a beautiful impish little creature, his heart melted. They got by on the few pounds that came in here and there. But, despite David’s devotion to Sadie, he remained erratic. His art kept him out until all hours, trying to make money or fighting or partying. Whatever he did, he did obsessively. To Mary’s regret, it seemed that he wasn’t able to be the David she loved all the time. There were demons inside him that she was too young to understand. He didn’t understand his demons either but now he had a new life in Camden Town, the epicentre of everything hip.
While pretending to themselves that all was well they were living separate lives, and Mary had no choice but to accept it. She missed her family back home and decided that perhaps the sight of their granddaughter would melt the ice and her parents would take her back into the fold. She convinced herself that taking Sadie and David up to Denton in a show of familial joy and harmony would make it clear to her father and mother that she was a responsible parent, not just a wayward teenager with a baby. So back up north they went, with little Sadie as a peace offering. At first things went to plan. Everyone behaved as David was offered tea and cake and Betty fussed around Mary and the baby, while Tom chatted awkwardly to the father of his granddaughter.
‘She’s beautiful,’ cooed Betty as Mary and David looked on proudly. More relatives arrived and Sadie was roundly admired.
‘She looks like a Nolan,’ said somebody. ‘A proper Nolan. She’s got the Nolan expression.’
David’s face turned cold and it was as if day had become night in his mind. His baby wasn’t a Nolan, she was a Vaughan. This family who had tried to ban him were taking ownership of the only thing he loved and he wasn’t going to stand for it. He stood up and the air about him seemed so thick with his enemies that he choked on it.
‘She doesn’t look like a fuckin’ Nolan,’ he said, grabbing a bottle of tomato ketchup that was on the table next to the food so carefully prepared to welcome him. ‘She looks like me.’ And with that he launched the bottle through the window, sending glass everywhere. He stormed out into the street and disappeared.
Inadvertently, Mary had given her parents all the fuel they needed to get her back. They swung into action, banning her from leaving the house and filing a request with a solicitor to make Mary a ward of court for her own protection. The full force of the Catholic religion was called upon too, and when the local priest appeared he was consulted in great depth. Sadie would be offered for adoption.
David was not seen again after the tomato ketchup incident. He returned to London and Mary knew that whatever happened she had to get back to him. Despite his violent outbursts, he was all she knew, and even though she was so alone, London was now her home. But more than anything, there was no way she was giving up her baby. Not ever. Soon afterwards, when Mary was back in her old bed in her old room in Denton, she decided enough was enough. So what if Vaughany was a lunatic? She and Sadie belonged with him. She got up, packed as quietly as she could, and with Sadie in her carry-cot, let herself out into the dark street.
David
Until 1967 home for Mary and David was the studio flat in Gloucester Avenue, and life returned to normal. Or as normal as it ever was for them. There was still no money but somehow they got by. Mary started to make clothes and David painted the room. Dylan and the Beatles were on the record player and Mary earned what she could by customising any old piece of cloth or furniture into the latest fashion. If David came home with a television set she would brighten it up by sticking glitter round the edges. She made sure they had trendy clothes and David walked about in the latest drainpipe cords, his hair styled like the lads in the Beatles, with Chelsea boots and neckerchiefs, usually covered in paint. He liked what he saw in the mirror, liked the fact that he looked harder than the southern jessies. He was stocky and pretty stout, but he walked tall as he strutted round the Slade, making both friends and enemies. There he met two like-minded artists, fellow northerners who had a business together customising furniture. Douglas Binder and Dudley Edwards were part of the über-hip London scene, and once David was in with them he was on his way. Binder and Edwards were already making pieces of furniture for Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon and the latest pop sensation, the Beatles.
David started to customise furniture