Life was one big juggling act of housework, childcare, trying to earn money, and marriage to a man who had old-fashioned ideas about a woman’s role. Mostly I was too submissive to kick up a fuss.
6
Little by little, bit by bit, I began to lift myself out of the role of domestic skivvy and stay-at-home mum. Once the children started school, I signed myself up for a correspondence course in chiropody. Eric approved, because it would mean I could help with some of the home visits needed in his practice, travelling out on my bicycle to see clients who were unable to attend the surgery.
When I’d qualified as a chiropodist and was earning some decent sums of money on my own account, I could supplement the housekeeping. Helen was doing dance classes, which she loved, and there were always extras she needed for the regular shows. Now I could buy these and I could pay for Graham to take riding lessons at the local stables. I began to put my foot down about certain things around the house as well. In particular, I’d always wanted a washing machine but Eric didn’t see the need: ‘My mother managed perfectly well without a washing machine so why can’t you?’
Instead of arguing I saved the money from my wages then slipped into the Co-op in town and chose a modest Indesit automatic, giving strict instructions that it was not to be delivered until the following day, which would give me enough time to prepare Eric for the arrival.
Imagine my horror when I arrived home to find some men already unloading the machine from the back of a van and trundling it noisily towards our front steps!
‘No, not that way!’ I cried. ‘Quick – come round the back.’
They installed the washing machine in the basement and, after a spot of grumbling, Eric accepted it once it was there. This gave me the idea of having a fitted kitchen installed while he was off on a golfing holiday. He could hardly rip it out again once it was in place, I reckoned (although he did complain that it was a shocking waste of money!).
These little bits of progress gave me confidence. With each tiny step forwards, my life was becoming a bit easier. With the children both at school, I had some hours free and my day wasn’t complete drudgery from morning to night. My next purchase was a huge secret, one I knew that Eric would never have consented to in a million years: I bought myself a horse.
It had been one of my childhood dreams to own a horse, and there was a field down by the river in Canterbury where I used to stop and pet the horses. I got talking to the old chap there and he told me he was looking to loan one of his horses, a thoroughbred named Ferica, for four pounds a week. Straight away I agreed to take it on, then a while later I bought a sorry-looking four-year-old called Copper at a horse fair in Ashford, only to find out later that it was a par-bred American quarter horse. I still don’t know how I got away with rushing out to groom, feed and ride the horses every day; I just got on my bike and went, and Eric never asked questions. It was a huge deception but I loved my horses to pieces and they brought me a lot of happy times. I finally had to confess to Eric a couple of years later, after I arrived home splattered from head to foot in mud, and he was utterly speechless, too gobsmacked even to protest.
Later still I took driving lessons. Eric didn’t drive and wasn’t keen on me learning, but I persevered and, after I passed the test, managed to buy myself a beat-up old car, a pale blue Singer Chamois, which cost £120. It was a lovely car with a walnut dashboard, but sadly it got written off a few years later when an uninsured student drove into me on a country road. I liked the independence driving brought, but for local journeys I’d always use my trusty old bike.
Still I found it difficult to show affection for my children. I’d have fought to the death to protect either of them, and I worked my socks off to buy whatever material things they needed, but I was such a squashed, bruised apple of a person that I was incapable of hugging them or telling them that I loved them. I’d do the chores instead of taking them to the park, accept extra bookings at work instead of having a day out at a fun fair, and I bitterly regret that now. You’d think losing my mum would have made me extra loving towards my own children, but with me it worked in quite the opposite way, making me cautious and reserved. It was a loss for them, and a loss for me too because I missed the chance to enjoy being a mum.
In 1975, I read a story in the newspapers that made me prick up my ears. Under a new law, adopted people had the right to apply for their birth certificates and seek information about the agency involved in their adoption, with a view to tracking down their birth parents. I still didn’t plan to track down Daisy and Henri Noël because I didn’t want to hurt Pop’s feelings, but I thought I should apply for a copy of my birth certificate. Apart from anything else, I thought I’d need it if I ever wanted to get a passport. You had to have counselling first, so I made an appointment and went along on the day to find a young, wet-behind-the-ears lad sitting behind a big desk, looking rather embarrassed by the role in which he found himself.
‘Do you think you are prepared for this?’ he asked, peering at a form in front of him.
‘Yes,’ I replied. My heart was pounding, but I didn’t want to tell this lad I was nervous and have to listen to him spouting counselling clichés he’d memorised from a textbook.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah.’
He opened a file, pulled out the certificate and passed it over, saying, ‘Here you are, then.’ So much for counselling!
I don’t know why I’d been nervous. The long, horizontal sheet didn’t give me much information that I hadn’t already gleaned from my adoption certificate, but I did learn that my birth mother’s maiden name was Daisy Louise Banks and that she came from Bellozanne Valley in Jersey, that my father’s occupation was itinerant farm worker and that he’d grown up in Ville à l’Evêque, Jersey. I now had addresses where they had lived at some stage, and once again I vaguely considered sending out tentative letters to make contact. I did try writing to the army authorities, trying to find out about my birth father’s military career, but my letters got passed from one department to the next without bringing any solid information. I wanted to know about Daisy and Henri, but I decided it wasn’t fair on Pop to try to get in contact with them directly.
Pop and Billie had just moved up to Scarborough, her home town, and he was becoming increasingly forgetful. We wrote to each other but often his letters contained non sequiturs or things that simply didn’t make sense. When I phoned, it was always Billie who answered, and if she passed the phone to him he frequently seemed confused. Even if I’d felt I could ask him questions about my birth parents, he probably wouldn’t have been able to answer them now. I’d missed my chance to ask whether he ever met Daisy Banks Noël, and whether she had been introduced to them by Auntie Wyn and Uncle Frank.
One day, I remembered that Pop had once given me a Jersey half-sovereign and told me he had dug it up in the garden. It was gold and glittery, like buried pirate treasure, and I’d kept it in his collar stud box. Suddenly, I began to wonder if that had been a parting gift from either Daisy or Henri as they said goodbye to their baby daughter. (Actually, I wasn’t sure whether Henri had ever set eyes on me or if he was away at the front when I was born. That seems more likely, because had he been around he could have signed those adoption papers straight away and saved Mum and Pop a year of heartache and worry.)
I tried asking Pop about the half-sovereign but he just looked blank, his memory being stolen bit by bit by the ravages of what was later diagnosed as dementia.
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